Strategic configuration of flexible electronics assembly facilities facingstochastic requirements

Flexible configuration of manufacturing facilities is a key strategy for ef ficiently improving market responsiveness and market share in the face of u ncertain future product demand. Flexible facility configurations can produc e an efficient production system that allows higher capacity utilization gi ven uncertainty in product demand and mix. The aim of this paper is to cons ider the alternative choices of flexible equipment available at the strateg ic planning level and to make decisions about the facility design and confi guration that best suits the specific needs of the manufacturing system und er consideration. A chance constrained mixed integer programming model for strategic configuration and capacity planning of flexible multiple-stage pr oduction facilities under time-varying production requirements is introduce d in this paper. It is an integrated model that determines the number of as sembly lines required, the flexible automation levels required in each line , capacity levels, and product assignments/reassignments for a multiple-sta ge production system, considering the stochastic nature of the demand. A tw o-step heuristic based on genetic algorithms is proposed and tested. Experi mental results indicate that the two-step heuristic performs well in terms of both computation speed and solution accuracy.