On the system setup and the scheduling problem in a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS)

In this paper we present a model which unifies several existing models with respect to two phases of the planning process of a Flexible Manufacturing System. These phases are the system setup phase and the scheduling phase and in literature they usually are considered separately. We give a mathematical formulation encompassing both phases. From this formulation several existing approaches can be deduced. We also describe some heuristic methods for our model and present the computational results.