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General Two Level Storage Management Problem - Reconsideration of the KTNS-Rule

Mika Hirvikorpi, Kari Salonen, Timo Knuutila, Olli S. Nevalainen, General Two Level Storage Management Problem - Reconsideration of the KTNS-Rule. TUCS Technical Reports 532, Turku Centre for Computer Science, 2003.

Abstract:

This paper concerns a two-level storage management problem arising in flexible manufacturing systems. We consider the case where there are several different types of PCBs (printed circuit board) to be processed with a component assembly machine. The order of processing the PCBs is fixed and our task is to perform the component switches between the primary storage (machine feeder consisting of an array of of feeder slots) and the secondary storage (component shelves) so that the overall cost incurred from the switches is minimal. The component switches are necessary because of the limited capacity of the primary storage.

It is well known, that the “Keep Tool Needed Soonest” policy is optimal when the component sizes (number of feeder slots occupied by the components) are all equal. Here we consider a more general problem in which different component types have different sizes and switching costs. This type of the problem was first considered by Matzliach and Tzur (2000). Their perspective to this problem was in the tool management of a numerically controlled (NC) machine and their formulation did not consider the reorganization costs due to the fragmentation of the primary storage (tool magazine). In PCB assembly these costs have a significant impact to the solution, and our formulation of the problem takes into account also the actual placement of the components in the primary storage.

BibTeX entry:

@TECHREPORT{tHiSaKnNe03a,
  title = {General Two Level Storage Management Problem - Reconsideration of the KTNS-Rule},
  author = {Hirvikorpi, Mika and Salonen, Kari and Knuutila, Timo and Nevalainen, Olli S.},
  number = {532},
  series = {TUCS Technical Reports},
  publisher = {Turku Centre for Computer Science},
  year = {2003},
  ISBN = {952-12-1172-5},
}

Belongs to TUCS Research Unit(s): Algorithmics and Computational Intelligence Group (ACI)

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