Production planning for flexible manufacturing systems

Preface The work described in this thesis started in the spring of 1988. At that time I had just completed my Master's thesis in Operations Research and Econometrics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and I barely knew anything about flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). It was my thesis advisor Antoon Kolen who introduced me to this new field of application for techniques from Operations Research. This was the starting point of our cooperation in the last 4 years of which this thesis is the endproduct. My decision to come to Maastricht proved to be the right one and I owe a lot to the group of researchers I worked with at the University of Limburg. The research environment at the University of Limburg is international, informal and innovative. Also, the beauty and style of Maastricht and South-Limburg offer countless opportunities for enjoying a Burgundian life every now and then. I have learned a lot on the application of flexible manufacturing technology and the development of models to improve the efficiency of these systems during the last years. I have to thank my thesis advisors Yves Crama and Antoon Kolen for the many hours we spent discussing planning and combinatorial optimization problems and the patience and expertise with which they guided this research. The leitmotiv in the first part of the journey into the field of flexible manufacturing were the frequent meetings together with Frits Spieksma and our advisors Yves Crama and Antoon Kolen. The research described in Chapters 2 and 6 of this thesis originated at these meetings. In Chapter 2 a real-world production planning problem in the automated manufacturing of printed circuit boards is described. Under the direction of Yves Crama and Antoon Kolen, Frits Spieksma and I worked on this project. This research was followed by a another joint project concentrating on recognizing combinatorial properties and developing solution strategies for a specific problem occurring in FMS production planning, i.e. the problem of minimizing the number of tool switches, which is described in Chapter 6. The topic of efficient tool management got a hold of us and other results of work in this field are described in Chapters 3, 4 and 5. I conducted the research described in these chapters under the guidance of Yves Crama. It was during this period that the final shape of this thesis was decided on and without the great interest and important comments …