Bounding approaches for operation assignment and capacity allocation problem in flexible manufacturing systems

This study considers an operation assignment and capacity allocation problem that arises in flexible manufacturing systems. Automated machines are assumed to have scarce time and tool magazine capacities and the tools are available in limited quantities. The aim is to select a subset of operations with maximum total weight. The weight of an operation may represent its profit, processing load, relative priority. Several upper bounding procedures have been taken into account. The results of computational tests have revealed that the proposed upper bounding procedures produce satisfactory solutions in reasonable CPU times. We suggest using some of the bounds when the quality of the solutions is more important than the speed of achieving them and some others when the speed is more important than the quality.