Assignment problems with changeover cost

Abstract

We consider some variant models, having changeover cost, of the assignment problem. In these models, multiple assignments to an operator are allowed. In addition to assignment costs, a changeover cost is incurred if an operator does one job after another is completed. Two different types of changeover costs and related two models are considered. Mathematical programming formulations are given for the models. When changeover costs are dependent on the operator but independent of the jobs and are non-negative, a linear programming model is obtained. For the case when changeover costs are dependent on the jobs, a linear integer programming formulation is obtained. We also show that, this problem is strongly NP-hard. A heuristic solution method is suggested for it. Numerical findings on the performance of the method are given.