A branch and bound based heuristic for multi-product resource constrained scheduling problem in a flexible manufacturing system environment

This paper addresses an inter-dependent multiple-product resource-constrained sheduling problem with the objective of makespan minimization in a flexible manufacturing system with resource flexibility. Both consumable and non-consumable resources are considered along with their alternative types and constrained utilization rates. A 0–1 integer linear programming formulation is presented for the problem. The complexity of the problem is observed to increase with the availability of alternate resources for product operations. A branch and bound based heuristic is proposed as a solution methodology. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the problem and the effectiveness of the heuristic.