Reducing the number of setups for CNC punch presses

Large computer numerical control (CNC) punch presses are widely used for punching holes in heavy gage sheet metals. The turret of such presses has limited tool capacity, and any tool changes require dismantling the turret. Dismantling and reloading the turret generally takes several hours and is the dominant element of the total flow time for a batch of sheet metals. Reducing the turret setup time requires judicious grouping of the required tool set. We formulated an integer program to obtain the minimum number of setups. However, since the problem is nondeterministic polynomial-time hard (NP-hard), we offer three heuristics to solve the problem. We compare solutions obtained from the three heuristics with their respective optimal solutions using three simulated data sets and an industrial data set.