In this paper, we use integer programming (IP) to compute minimal forecast horizons for the classical dynamic lot-sizing problem (DLS). As a solution approach for computing forecast horizons, integer programming has been largely ignored by the research community. It is our belief that the...

A great deal of work has been done to analyze the problem of robot move sequencing and part scheduling in robotic flowshop cells. We examine the recent developments in this literature. A robotic flowshop cell consists of a number of processing stages served by one or more robots. Each stage has...

This paper considers a problem of optimal preventive maintenance and replacement schedule of equipment devoted to extracting resources from known deposits. Typical examples are oil drills, mine shovels, etc. At most one replacement of the existing machinery by a new one is allowed. The problem...

This paper is concerned with near-optimal control of manufacturing systems consisting of two unreliable machines in tandem and having the objective of minimizing the total discounted cost of inventories/shortages over an infinite horizon. Asymptotic optimal feedback controls are constructed with...

Part-orienting systems are employed in many manufacturing environments to feed work parts in correct orientation for proper operations. A part-orienting system is a serial arrangement of orienting devices; the selection and ordering of these devices is an important design aspect that is...

A hierarchical approach to control a manufacturing system, subject to multiple machine states modeled by a Markov process with weak and strong interactions, is suggested. The idea is to aggregate strongly interacting or high transition probability states within a group of states and consider...

We consider a production planning problem in a two-machine flowshop subject to breakdown and repair of machines and subject to nonnegativity and upper bound constraints on work-in-process. The objective is to choose machine production rates over time to minimize the long-run average...

This paper is concerned with a periodic review inventory system with fast and slow delivery modes, fixed ordering cost, and regular demand forecast updates. At the beginning of each period, on-hand inventory and demand information are updated. At the same time, decisions on how much to order...

A robotic cell - manufacturing system widely used in industry - contains two or more robot-served machines, repetitively producing a number of part types. In this paper, we consider scheduling of operations in a bufferless dual-gripper robotic cell processing multiple part types. The processing...

This paper considers the dynamic lot sizing problem of H. M. Wagner and T. M. Whitin with the assumption that the total cost of n setups is a concave nondecreasing function of n. Such setup costs could arise from the worker learning in setups and/or technological improvements in setup methods....