Optimization for single-part flow-line configurations of reconfigurable manufacturing system based on graph theory

Generating the optimal and K-1 suboptimal(K-best) Single-Part Flow-Line(SPFL) configurations within a specified Demand Period(DP) is an important optimization problem during configuration selection for Reconfigurable Manufacturing System(RMS).By specifying the opertaion precedence graph for a part,relationships between operations and Operation Setups(OSs) as well as machining options for each OS,the optimization problem was to determine the number of workstations,select machine type and number of parallel machines for each workstation as well as assign OSs for each workstation.The objective was to minimize capital cost of SPFL configurations.Generation of K-best configurations subject to constraints on space,initial investment,functionality and capacity was modeled as a Constrained K-Shortest Paths(CKSP) problem on an combined augmented acyclic graph associated with all feasible OS sequences.Subsequently,K-best configurations were obtainted by a CKSP algorithm.Finally,a case study illustrated the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed model and solution method.