Optimal design of a class of transfer lines with blocks of parallel operations

Abstract A problem of optimal design of automatic transfer lines is considered. For these lines, operations are partitioned into blocks. The operations of the same block are performed simultaneously, and different blocks of the same workstation are executed sequentially. The relations of the necessity and the possibility of combining operations in blocks and workstations as well as precedence constraints are given. The problem is to minimize the total number of workstations and blocks, providing a given cycle time and satisfying the above constraints. Two methods are proposed to solve the problem. The first one uses mixed integer programming, the second is based on reducing the initial problem to the shortest constraint path problem.