Scheduling and operator control in reconfigurable assembly systems

Pushed by the recent market trends, companies need to adapt to changeable demands, regarding both mix and volume, in order to keep their competitiveness. Modular and reconfigurable assembly systems offer an efficient solution to these changes, providing economies of scale and also economies of scope. In the previous works of the authors, novel methods were presented to solve strategic level system configuration, and tactical mid-term production planning problems related to modular, reconfigurable assembly systems. The paper relies on these results, and aims at extending the previously proposed planning hierarchy on the short-term, daily production scheduling. The objective is to minimize the total operator headcount, considering the production lot sizes calculated on a higher, planning level on a working shift basis. The analyzed scheduling problem requires novel models, as important constraints in the scheduling problem are the reconfigurations consuming time as well as resources. In the paper, constraint programming and metaheuristics models are formulated and compared, resulting in production schedules that specify the production sequences, and the operator allocations. Conclusively, the operator controls can be also obtained from the results, specifying a work plan and tasks for a given operator within a working shift. The proposed methods are compared by using real industrial problem instances. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.