Article ID: | iaor20021240 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 31 |
Issue: | 7 |
Start Page Number: | 679 |
End Page Number: | 693 |
Publication Date: | Jun 1999 |
Journal: | IIE Transactions |
Authors: | Proth J.M., Minis I., Herrmann J.W., Ioannou G. |
Keywords: | manufacturing industries, programming: integer |
This paper considers the problem of minimizing the fixed cost of acquiring material handling transporters and the operational cost of material transfer in a manufacturing system. This decision problem, which arises during manufacturing facility design, is modeled using an integer programming formulation. Since the problem is NP-complete, two efficient heuristics are developed to solve it. Computational complexity, worst-case performance analysis, and extensive computational tests are provided for both heuristics. The results indicate that the proposed methods are well suited for large-scale manufacturing applications.