Combinatorial design of a minimum cost transfer line by using a set of available equipment units

AbstractThe problem studied is related to the optimal design of a transfer line for themass production of a single type of product. To produce each of these itemsa given set of operations has to be performed. The said line is a sequenceof workstations, whose number has to be decided, and each workstation as-signed a number of processing units (pieces of equipment or blocks). Eachblock performs a set of operations. A set of all available blocks is given.There is the same basic cost associated with each workstation and di erentadditional costs associated with the blocks. The problem then is to design aminimum cost transfer line by choosing and assigning the blocks to worksta-tions. The speci city of the problem is that all blocks assigned to the sameworkstation are activated in parallel. Therefore, the time of a workstation is Corresponding author Email addresses: delorme@emse.fr (Xavier Delorme), dolgui@emse.fr (AlexandreDolgui), kovalyov_my@newman.bas-net.by (Mikhail Y. Kovalyov)URL: http://www.emse.fr/˘delorme/ (Xavier Delorme),http://www.emse.fr/˘dolgui/ (Alexandre Dolgui),http://uiip.bas-net.by/personal/kovalyov/index_kovalyov.htm (Mikhail Y.Kovalyov)Preprint submitted to Omega November 16, 2010

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