Optimal and heuristic procedures for row layout problems in automated manufacturing systems

Optimal and heuristic procedures for row layout problems in automated manufacturing systems

0.00 Avg rating0 Votes
Article ID: iaor1997522
Country: United Kingdom
Volume: 47
Issue: 6
Start Page Number: 803
End Page Number: 816
Publication Date: Jun 1996
Journal: Journal of the Operational Research Society
Authors: ,
Keywords: programming: mathematical
Abstract:

In many automated manufacturing environments, particularly flowlines and flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs), machines are arranged along a straight material handling track with a material handling device moving jobs from one machine to another. These layouts are referred to as row machine layouts. In this paper we study the Row Layout Problem (RLP) under the design objective of minimizing the total backtracking distance of the material handling device, which is a NP-complete problem. The paper proposes the use of a dynamic programming algorithm for its solution. Special cases of the problem, usually encountered in flexible manufacturing cells and which can be solved with polynomial procedures, are also discussed. For the equidistant case (i.e., successive candidate locations are in equal distances), the paper formulates the problem as an integer linear program. The use of standard mathematical programming codes can efficiently solve this formulation. Two effective heuristic procedures, which explore simple ideas based on local optimality conditions, are also presented. Extensive computational results demonstrate the effectiveness of such heuristics.

Reviews

Required fields are marked *. Your email address will not be published.