A Method to Allocate Machine Tools Based on Design Structure Matrix

Abstract

In order to solve the issue of enterprises on reasonably allocating machine tools quickly before a part is manufactured, this paper presented a machine tool scheduling method based on design structure matrix (DSM). A scheduling model for correlation matrix between part manufacturing processes and machine tools was constructed. The matrix traversal algorithm was utilized to allocate machine tools automatically and reasonably based on the process information of a part to be manufactured. The evaluation indexes and standards of optimal machine tool scheduling plan were put forward and the TOPSIS method was used to solve the problem of choosing the optimal machine tool scheduling plan. The feasibility of the method was verified through an application case using the developed prototype system. Compared with other two methods, namely the manual allocation method of machine tool and the scheduling method based on genetic algorithm, our method has an advantage of spending less time.