A study on surrogate objectives for loading a certain type of flexible manufacturing system

Various objectives are used for the loading problem in flexible manufacturing systems. Because of the complexity, objectives commonly used in real fields may not be employed when solving the problem. This paper examines relationships between these objectives and ones that are relatively easy to deal with and are used in most research on this problem, i.e. balancing workloads of machines. Also defined are pertinent measures of balance for an objective function of the problem. Computational tests show that balancing workloads helps to reduce tardiness and makespan while enhancing system throughput in a system with the characteristics of open job shops.