The Tool-Switching Problem With Magazine Capacity and Tool Size Constraints

Previous works often simplify the tool-switching problem by using uniform tool size and magazine capacity constraints. A tool has uniform size when it requires only one slot to be stored in the magazine. The magazine capacity constraints assume that the magazine can hold all tools for each job. This paper addresses the more general case of the tool-switching problem when both uniform tool size and magazine capacity constraints are relaxed. The problem is decomposed into two cases: partial and complete job splitting. In the first case, a job is said to be partially split into subjobs if each subjob requires at least two tools which occupy less than the capacity of the magazine. In the second case, a job is said to be completely split into subjobs if each subjob requires only one tool. The problems are proven to be NP complete. An attempt is made to solve these cases while the tools are changed either concurrently with job change or not. Some promising results are obtained.