Balancing large-scale machining lines with multi-spindle heads using decomposition

Alexandre Dolgui (1) , Brigitte Finel (2) , Olga Battaïa (3) , Nikolay Guschinsky (4) , Genrikh Levin (4) , Francois B. Vernadat (2)

1 Laboratoire en Sciences et Technologies de l'Information
2 LGIPM - Laboratoire de Génie Industriel et de Production Mécanique
3 Division for Indl Engineering and Computer Sciences
4 Operational Research

The paper deals with optimal logical layout design for a type of machining lines. Such lines are made of many machine-tools (workstations) located in sequence. On each workstation there are several multi-spindle heads. A spindle-head does not execute one operation but a block of machining operations simultaneously. The problem studied in this paper consists in finding the best partition of the set of all operations to be executed on the line into blocks and workstations. The objective is to minimize the number of blocks and workstations. An optimal decision must satisfy a desired productivity rate (cycle time) and precedence and compatibility constraints for machining operations. A heuristic approach based on decomposition of a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) model is developed. Two ways of forming sub-problems are proposed. One of them treats the obtained subsets independently. The second one aggregates the solution of the previous sub-problems. Results of their computational evaluation are reported.

Mots clés: Physical Sciences

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]

Alexandre Dolgui, Brigitte Finel, Olga Battaïa, Nikolay Guschinsky, Genrikh Levin, et al.. Balancing large-scale machining lines with multi-spindle heads using decomposition. International Journal of Production Research, 2006, 44 (18-19), pp.4105-4120. ⟨10.1080/00207540600632232⟩. ⟨hal-00512895⟩