Stochastic acyclic reconfigurable flow shop modeling and optimization

Reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) is a new manufacturing paradigm that enables the manufacturing companies to respond to drastic changes in market demands quickly and cost-effectively. The problem of stochastic acyclic reconfigurable flow shop modeling and optimization is put forward and studied for RMS in this paper. The optimal configuration is defined as the one under which the system functions with the minimum expected makespan. The stochastic acyclic reconfigurable flow shop can be formulated as a 2-stage stochastic linear programming model with recourse, from which the optimal configuration can be obtained.