Heuristics for the FMS-loading and part-type-selection problems

In this article, we study the FMS-loading and part-type-selection problems, in which each part is processed by a series of operations. Two heuristic methods are presented for the objectives of balancing workloads and meeting due dates. These heuristics perform a specific evaluation of the objective function at each iteration. The goal of Heuristic#1 is to achieve workload balance. The additional goal of Heuristic#2 is to reduce the number of late part types. The loading and part-type selection must satisfy a tooling constraint. Computational results are encouraging and indicate significant improvement over the existing methods.