A Constraint Programming Approach to Tool Allocation and Resource Scheduling in FMS

A novel constraint programming (CP) formulation that addresses the scheduling problem associated to a class of Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) is presented. It tackles the problem in a global way by considering the tool allocation, machine assignment, routing and scheduling decisions, altogether in the formulation. Moreover, it is able to take into account a variety of objective functions. The proposed approach proved to be computationally efficient. This is shown by discussing the results of different size problems