Design of manufacturing Systems: prototype of a decision aid software

In this paper we present a prototype of decision aid system for the logical layout design of unit-head machines with rotary table. User can add and modify characteristics of the part to be machined, the constraints related to the design of spindle heads and working positions, as well as precedence constraints related to operations. The goal of this software tool is to minimize the total number of working positions and spindle heads, while reaching a given cycle time and satisfying the above constraints. The proposed method to solve the problem is based on its reduction to a constrained shortest path problem.