A generic model to solve tactical planning problems in flexible manufacturing systems

This paper is an attempt to develop a generic modeling framework that addresses tactical planning problems of flexible manufacturing systems in a coherent manner. We propose a generic 0–1 mixed integer programming formulation, that integrates batching, loading, and routing problems with their critical aspects related to a system's performance. For this purpose, a thorough analysis is made to determine and relate system components, their attributes, and alternatives together with performance measures specific to tactical planning. This provided the justification to support our argument about generality of the model. A linear programming formulation is provided to approximate the mixed integer formulation proposed so as to overcome the problem's combinatorial complexity. The potential capability of the linear approximation proposed is also demonstrated via a small set of test problems.