An investigation of multiproduct, multimachine production scheduling and inventory control of a flow-shop system

Unlike most of the previous studies of the multiproduct, multimachine systems, hero an attempt is made to consider the man-machine overtime and idleness costs together with the usual inventory-related costs (the set-up costs, carrying costs, and back-logging costs). The major assumptions of the model include: (a) demand for each product is captive and constant; (b) single or multiple facility work centres may be employed: (c) the total manufacturing operations of any single product must be completed before another product can be started; (d) all the manufacturing facilities are set up simultaneously for each of the products and its production can be started only after all the machines are ready. The annual total variable cost function is found to be very complex. Therefore, a recursive algorithm is required to solve this function for the values of optimal produetion-cycle-thnes of the individual products, Tj *,s . As the facilities are assumed to produce only one product at a time, these cycle time values...