ECONOMIC PROCESSING MODELS FOR FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

In this paper, economic processing models are presented for determining processing speeds and tool loading to minimize the makespan to produce a given set of parts in a flexible manufacturing system. Using Taylors tool life equation, models for determining the optimal processing speeds and the tools to be loaded into finite capacity machine magazines are formulated. Several heuristics for obtaining feasible solutions are discussed. The quality of the solutions obtained using these heuristics is evaluated by computational experiments against lower bounds.