Modeling an assembly line for configuration and flow management

In its basic form the management control of a flexible production system requires to assign a set of operations to a set of machines, and to connect machines by a transportation network, such that a number of constraints is satisfied and some efficiency index is optimized. The aim of the work is to give a general framework to formulate and model, in a formal way, different subproblems arising from embedding an assembly process on different configurations of a flexible production system. Because of the complexity of the overall problem, it is useful to have simple and well structured layouts and procedures that help the design and operation of flexible systems. These layouts and procedures induce additional constraints, due to the products' and the process' features. The paper also investigates the complexity of various subcases of the problem. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd, All rights reserved