Note---Operator Assignment and the Parametric Preflow Algorithm

Robert J. Wittrock
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Robert J. Wittrock: Manufacturing Research Department, IBM Research Division, T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598

Management Science, 1992, vol. 38, issue 9, 1354-1359

Abstract: This note addresses a problem of assigning human operators to operations in a manufacturing system. The problem involves a set of operations, a work load for each operation, and a set of human operators, each skilled at a subset of the operations. The task is to assign the operators to the operations so as to maximize the capacity of the system, robustly. The problem is formulated as a network flow problem with a lexicographic objective. It is then shown how to solve this problem very efficiently as a parametric sequence of network maximum flow problems, by application of the "parametric preflow" algorithm of Gallo, Grigoriadis and Tarjan.

Keywords: operator assignment; parametric preflow algorithm; network flow; lexicographic objective; robustness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992
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