9500211 Wilhelm This award provides funding for research that will establish a science base for optimizing integer programming formulations of large-scale, flexible assembly design problems. Design decisions that will be addressed include prescribing system configuration, for example, flexible lines or focused factories; strategic aspects such as selecting machines; tactical aspects such as assigning tasks to machines, selecting tooling and prescribing tool changeovers; and interfacing with operational issues such as model sequencing and lot sizing. Specific research objectives are: integrated, state-of-the-art branch and cut implementation; effective facet generation approach; computational testing to evaluate the approach; and collaboration with industry, assuring relevancy and facilitating technology transfer. If successful, this research will lead to an advanced technology base for assembly by devising new methods to assure design robustness, incorporating recent advances from the area of assembly sequence planning, dealing with relevant aspects of design, and assuring a generic solution approach that can be tailored to application-specific features. In addition, this research could lead to fundamental advances in the field of integer programming, improving the capability to solve a broad range of engineering problems in manufacturing and related areas. ***
