A FAMILY OF HIERARCHICAL-MODELS FOR THE DESIGN OF DETERMINISTIC ASSEMBLY SYSTEMS

The purpose of this paper is to propose a family of hierarchical model s which incorporate a broad range of features that represent many aspe cts that are fundamental to deterministic assembly system design probl ems. The family consists of a set of models that incorporate successiv ely more advanced features so that components representing the more si mple cases appear as imbedded structures in the models for more comple x cases. The ultimate goal is to develop models that can be exploited, for example by strong cutting plane methods, to resolve assembly syst em design problems. Cutting plane methods have achieved noteworthy suc cesses in resolving other integer programs and offer the promise of pr oviding a capability to resolve a broad variety of assembly system des ign problems. Polytopes associated with imbedded structures can be stu died and resulting valid inequalities can also be used in solving the more complex, practical cases. This paper is a means of initiating res earch in this important direction.