Scheduling for additive manufacturing with two-dimensional packing and incompatible items

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Abstract

Additive manufacturing technology can enable low-cost, efficient production of low-demand, highly-complex customized items with reduced lead time if production is judiciously planned. This paper addresses the assignment of requested items into batches and the scheduling of the batches onto 3D printers. The objective is to minimize the manufacturing makespan while satisfying items’ compatibility, two-dimensional no-overlap and containment packing constraints within a batch, and machine’s capability to manufacture a batch. The problem is modeled as a mixed integer linear program (MIP) that solves instances up to 100 items. For hard and large instances, this paper proposes a matheuristic that fathoms packings using a step-wise check procedure. Computational results reveal that the proposed heuristic improves the makespan of MIP solutions of hard instances by 12% on average, with improvements reaching up to 72% for instances with 150 items. They further show that the proposed heuristic finds the best makespan for 88% of all cases. Finally, we provide useful managerial insights for production flexibility and scheduling policies.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number103139
Pages (from-to)1-21
Number of pages21
JournalOmega : the international journal of management science
Volume129
Issue number129
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2024
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85198035808
ORCID /0000-0003-4711-2184/work/164619672

Keywords

Research priority areas of TU Dresden

Keywords

  • Batch processing machines, additive manufacturing, incompatible machines, packing problem