Heuristics for a tool provisioning problem in a flexible manufacturing system with an automatic tool transporter

This paper considers a tool provisioning problem in a flexible manufacturin g system (FMS) with an automatic tool transporter. The problem considered h ere is that of determining the number of copies of each tool type for a lim ited budget with the objective of minimizing makespan, This problem should be solved to decide the (additional) purchase of required tools when the FM S should be reconfigured due to change of part mix. To solve the problem, t wo heuristic algorithms are proposed. One is a composite search algorithm b ased on two greedy search methods, and the other is a search algorithm in w hich numbers of tool copies are determined based on tool groupings. In both algorithms, simulation results are used to find search directions. Computa tional experiments show that the latter search algorithm gives better resul ts.