A Mixed Integer Programming Formulation for Generating Shared Press-Brake Setups

To enable cost-effective small batch manufacturing, we need to eliminate unnecessary setup operations, improve tool utilization, and thereby increase throughput. In sheet metal bending, the time taken for the actual process of bending is significantly less compared to the time taken for setup and tool changes. Press-brakes for sheet metal bending can be setup to produce more than one type of parts without requiring a setup change. To exploit this flexibility, we need setup planning techniques so that press-brake setups can be shared among many different parts. In this paper, we describe an approach based on mixed integer programming to generate a shared setup for a set of parts. We expect that by producing many different types of parts on the same setup, we can significantly reduce the number of setups required and enable cost-effective small-batch manufacturing.