MACHINE LOAD BALANCING BASED ON MINIIMIZING SYSTEM UNBALANCE IN A FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENT

Operational effectiveness of flexible manufacturing systems largely depends on a good quality solution to the machine loading problem (MLP). Thus, this problem is considered as a vital pre-release decision-making problem in a manufacturing environment. Since MLP affects performance of manufacturing systems, this problem has been considered by several researchers in recent years and some techniques, meta-heuristic and heuristic procedures have been suggested to obtain a local optimal solution for this problem. This paper formulates machine loading problem as a linear mathematical programming model to determine an exact solution for it. The objective function of the proposed model is to minimize the load variation between machines. The proposed model has been coded in Lingo 8 Software environment. Some benchmark problems are solved through the proposed model with Lingo Software and results are compared with those available in the literature. The solutions of the proposed model are obtained in an acceptable time and it can result in a significant cost-effectiveness in a mass production environment.