Manufacturing systems, regardless of their size, have to work with scarce resources in dynamic environments. Managers are asked to assign production facilities over time to parallel activities respecting operational constraints and deadlines while keeping resource costs as low as possible. Thus, classic scheduling approaches are not adequate when (i) a task simultaneously requires a set of different resources and (ii) a trade-off between different objectives (like time, cost and workload balance) should be reached. In such a case, more sophisticated models and algorithms should be brought to the attention of managers and executives of manufacturing companies.

Effective Resource Management in Manufacturing Systems aims to provide robust methods for achieving effective resource allocation and to solve related problems that occur daily and often generate cost overruns, specifically focusing on problems like resource levelling, sizing of machines and production layouts, cost optimization in production planning and scheduling. This approach is based on providing quantitative methods, covering both mathematical programming and algorithms, leading to high quality solutions for the analysed problems. Details of extensive experimentation is provided for the proposed techniques to put them in a practical perspective, so that, on the one hand, the reader can reproduce them, and, on the other hand, it appears clear how they can be implemented in real scenarios.

This book will be a valuable resource for postgraduate students studying business, engineering or computer science. It will also be of interest to researchers in the fore-mentioned areas.

The Springer Series in Advanced Manufacturing publishes the best teaching and reference material to support students, educators and practitioners in manufacturing technology and management. This international series includes advanced textbooks, research monographs, edited works and conference proceedings covering all subjects in advanced manufacturing. The series focuses on new topics of interest, new treatments of more traditional areas and coverage of the applications of information and communication technology (ICT) in manufacturing.

Autorentext

Massimiliano Caramia received his Laurea Degree in Management Engineering at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Italy in 1996, and his Ph.D. in Operations Research at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" in 2000. From 2000 to 2001 he was a research associate at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata", since then he has been a researcher at the Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo "M. Picone" of the Italian National Research Council. His primary research interests include: combinatorial optimization, manufacturing, real life scheduling problems and logistics. He has published many papers in international journals such as Discrete Mathematics and SIAM Journal on Optimization, Networks, and has acted as a referee for many international journals, including: Journal of Discrete Algorithms, Transportation Science and International Transactions in Operational Research. His teaching subjects are Operations Research, Models and Analysis of Manufacturing Systems, Mathematical Methods for Management, Decision Support Systems, Quality and Performance Management, Project Management.

Paolo Dell'Olmo received his Laurea Degree in Electronic Engineering at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy. He became a full professor in Operations Research in 2000. He has been a visiting scholar at the Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering of University of Arizona (1992-93), a visiting professor at the Operation Research Center of MIT (1998). Currently, he is: Head of the Department of Statistics, Probability and Applied Statistics at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", he is also a Director of the Masters degree in Data Intelligence and Strategic Decisions and coordinator of the PhD program in Operations Research of the University of Rome as well as a research fellow of the Istituto di Analisi dei Sistemi e Informatica. He has been responsible for several national and international research projects and author of more than 60 scientific paperspublished in international journals. His primary research interests include: combinatorial optimization and real life scheduling and routing problems.

Zusammenfassung

Manufacturing systems work with scarce resources in dynamic environments. Managers need to assign production facilities to parallel activities, respecting operational constraints and deadlines while keeping costs low. Old scheduling approaches are inadequate when a task both requires a set of different resources and a trade-off between objectives. More sophisticated models and algorithms are needed by these managers.

This book provides robust methods for achieving effective resource allocation. It also solves problems such as resource levelling, sizing of machines and production layouts, cost optimization in production planning and scheduling that occur daily and often generate cost overruns. The quantitative methods used cover both mathematical programming and algorithms, leading to high quality solutions. Details of experimentation put these techniques in a practical perspective.

This book is a valuable resource for postgraduate students and researchers in business, engineering or computer science.

Inhalt
Manufacturing Systems: Trends, Classification, and Behavior Patterns.- On-Line Load Balancing.- Resource Levelling.- Scheduling Jobs in Robotized Cells with Multiple Shared Resources.- Tool Management on Flexible Machines.