Scheduling of flexible flow lines in an automobile assembly plant

This paper deals with the material flow management in a large-scale manufacturing process, namely the assembly of automobiles in a highly automated plant in Italy. After a detailed description of the plant from the viewpoint of material flow issues, the modeling process and the methodologies employed to address the problems are illustrate, The decision medals were validated by means of simulations of the real plant in several different production scenarios (varying demand volume and mix, resource availability etc.)