Part-type selection in flexible manufacturing systems: A bicriteria approach with due dates

We studied the part-type selection problem in a Flexible Manufacturing Environment. We formulated the problem as a bicriteria mathematical programming problem where the objectives are maximisation of a number of part-types selected and minimisation of a measure of total tardiness. Taking the vector optimisation approach, we found all of the efficient solutions to the problem. The efficient set to this problem portrays the trade-off information between the two objectives. We suggest that the Decision Maker should choose one of the efficient solutions for implementation depending on the dynamics of the system. We report computational results that highlight some characteristics of the efficient solutions. We compare the quality of solutions obtained through the bicriteria model with those of a more traditional approach: maximising the weighted sum of part-types selected where the weights are assigned based on due-dates. Our results imply a strong possibility of significant improvement in due date performance by taking a bicriteria approach to the part-type selection problem.