A MILP-based heuristic approach for the design of multi-product modular reconfigurable lines

This paper deals with the design of a reconfigurable modular manufacturing line. The studied line is composed of a fixed number of modular machines, each of which having a limited number of spots where modules can be placed. Such a line is able to handle different products. Switching from one product configuration to another requires the line to be reconfigured by adding, moving or removing some modules. The objective of this paper is to minimize the total number of modules necessary to produce a given set of products. To do this, a first extended MILP formulation is proposed based on a module generation algorithm. Then, a MILP-based heuristic approach, which uses a module filtering algorithm, is suggested to address the studied problem. Preliminary results and a comparison between the two developed approaches are finally presented and discussed. Copyright (C) 2022 The Authors.