Virtual manufacturing cells scheduling considering lotstreaming and sequence dependent setup times

In this paper, a new mathematical model for the problem of job scheduling in virtual manufacturing cells (VMC) is presented to minimizing the completion time of all jobs. Sequence dependent setup times of machines is considered and lot streaming is possible. In Virtual manufacturing cells, each job has a different processing path and there is a set of machines for processing each operation. There are multiple machine types with several identical machines in each type locating in different locations in the shop floor. In this type of system, the cells are not physical and Machines can be shared between the cells. In Mixed integer nonlinear programming model presented, the scheduling decisions involve assigning a machine to each operation, the start time at each operation, the start time of machines and sub lot sizes of each job. Some test problems have been generated to demonstrate the implementation of the model and solved by Lingo.