A novel 0-1 linear integer programming model for dynamic machine-tool selection and operation allocation in a flexible manufacturing system

This paper considers a problem of dynamic machine-tool selection and operation allocation with part and tool movement policies in a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) environment. For this purpose, a novel 0-1 linear integer programming model is presented in such a way that each part and each tool can move during the production phase. It is assumed that there are a given set of tools and machines that can produce different kinds of orders (or part types). The objective of this model is to determine a machine-tool combination for each operation of the part type by minimizing some production costs, such as machining costs, setup costs, material handling costs and tool movement costs. In addition, due to the NP-hard nature of the problem, a new heuristic method based on five simple procedures (FSP) is proposed for solving the given problem, whose performance is tested on a number of randomly generated problems. The related results are compared with results obtained by a branch-and-bound method. It has been found that the proposed heuristic method gives good results in terms of objective function values and CPU times.