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

LUIS J. ZEBALLOS

ROBOTICS AND COMPUTER-INTEGRATED MANUFACTURING

ELSEVIER

Lugar: TRABAJO ENVIADO; Año: 2008 p. 1 - 53

0736-5845

TRABAJO ENVIADO 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 lifetime of tools as well as the tool magazine capacity of machines. In addition, it tackles the problem in an integrated way by considering tool planning and allocation, machine assignment, part routing and task timing decisions, altogether in the formulation. The scheduling objective is the makespan minimization. The proposed approach has been applied to the solution of several test problems of various sizes and degrees of difficulty.