TOOL MAGAZINE ARRANGEMENT AND OPERATIONS SEQUENCING ON CNC MACHINES

A two-phase approach is developed to solve the tool magazine arrangeme nt and operations sequencing problems. The overall aim is to minimize the total manufacturing cost by utilizing the benefits of tool sharing concept and loading duplicate tools due to a possible decrease in too ling and tool operating costs while maintaining the feasibility in ter ms of precedence, tool magazine capacity, tool life covering and tool availability constraints due to tool contention among the operations f or a limited number of tool types, because the absence of such crucial constraints may lead to infeasible results. Furthermore, the proposed approach can provide an effective decision making tool for the short term operational decisions of FMS. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd