A Constraint Programming Approach to Tool Allocation and Production Scheduling in Flexible Manufacturing Systems

LUIS J. ZEBALLOS

ROBOTICS AND COMPUTER-INTEGRATED MANUFACTURING

ELSEVIER

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2010 vol. 26 p. 725 - 743

0736-5845

This paper presents a constraint programming (CP) methodology to deal with the scheduling of Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs). The proposed approach, which consists of both a model and a search strategy, handles several features found in industrial environments, such as limitations on the number of tools in the system, the life time of tools as well as the tool magazine capacity of machines. In addition, it tackles the problem in a integrated way by considering tool planning and allocation, machine assignment, part routing and task timing decisions altogether in the approach. The formulation, which is able to take into account a variety of objective functions, has been successfully applied to the solution of test problems of various sizes and degrees of difficulty.