A heuristic method to determine the number of pallets in a flexible manufacturing system with several pallet types

This article presents a new heuristic method, called PANORAMA, that enables the determination of an appropriate number of pallets of each type that should circulate in a flexible manufacturing system. Production and return-on-investment constraints are considered. Statistical results derived using data from three existing flexible manufacturing systems, as well as randomly generated data, demonstrate the accuracy of the heuristic proposed.