'Periodica Polytechnica Budapest University of Technology and Economics'
Abstract
Capacity is one of the most important measures of resources used in
production. The conventional capacity measures do not include the value of
the equipment in the production system and so their application can lead to
erroneous operations management decisions. A new measure,
the `cost of unused capacity´, is more
frequently used to characterize resource usage. Flexible manufacturing
systems (FMS), where the machining methods, machine tools, handling
equipment, control systems and computer systems are used in an integrated
way, become rather complex. Under these circumstances the process of
production planning turns into a more complicated one, and as a consequence of
the
high value of the resources the drive for decreased cost of unused capacity
is significant. A linear programming model was formulated with the aim of
taking into consideration the cost of unused capacity. The model makes it
possible to take into account the unused capacities of various machines in
different degrees, while increasing the contribution at the same time. If
the cost of unused capacity is considered in capacity planning, the idle
time of valuable resources can be exploited more efficiently
