Integration of operation allocation and material handling in the design of flexible manufacturing system

Operation Allocation and Material Handling Systems Selection are important functions of a manufacturing system and as such must be considered within an integrated approach to manufacturing systems design. This work, an extension to the work done by Paulo (1999) proposes to integrate two important functions of manufacturing, i.e. operation allocation and material handling systems selection, and solve them iteratively. The objective of the operation allocation model is to select a group of machines where the operations of the part types will be performed and then to assign those operations to the selected machines. The material handling equipment is allocated by the material handling system selection model to transport a part type from one machine to the other for the next operation. The operation allocation model obtains one of its inputs from the material handling system selection model in the form of material handling equipment to be used for transporting a part type from one machine to another machine. The operation allocation model interfaces with the material handling system selection model by providing input data in the form of the manufacturing operations to be performed at each machining center. The material handling system is selected on the basis of the parts visiting a machining center to perform a manufacturing operation and the abilities of the handling devices to perform the required material handling functions of those part types. The material handling system selection model provides the feedback to the first model to complete the iteration. A program was developed to solve the two models iteratively so as to obtain an optimal solution.