Taming the State-space Explosion in the Makespan Optimization of Flexible Manufacturing Systems

AbstractThis article presents a modular automaton-based framework to specify flexible manufacturing systems and to optimize the makespan of product batches. The Batch Makespan Optimization (BMO) problem is NP-Hard and optimization can therefore take prohibitively long, depending on the size of the state-space induced by the specification. To tame the state-space explosion problem, we develop an algebra based on automata equivalence and inclusion relations that consider both behavior and structure. The algebra allows us to systematically relate the languages induced by the automata, their state-space sizes, and their solutions to the BMO problem. Further, we introduce a novel constraint-based approach to systematically prune the state-space based on the the notions of nonpermutation-repulsiveness and permutation-attractiveness. We prove that constraining a nonpermutation-repulsing automaton with a permutation-attracting constraint always reduces the state-space. This approach allows us to (i) compute optimal solutions of the BMO problem when the (additional) constraints are taken into account and (ii) compute bounds for the (original) BMO problem (without using the constraints). We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by optimizing an industrial wafer handling controller.