Some aspects concerning a network constrained approach for a class of job-shop process planning

Constrained models of manufacturing processes frequently provide an integral character of decision variables, which lead in general to weak duality and suboptimal solutions. Starting from the general transportation paradigm, this paper proposes two network constrained models of a minimum cost manufacturing process for a batch requiring different operations for different products, processed on several identical or different machines. Implications of strong duality are discussed within low-scale examples. Finally an IBM-ILOG implementation solution of a real job shop planning model is presented.