Okay. A simple 2 field sort shows us that each machine has multiple chemicals and multiple nozzles for some of those chemicals. And multiple machines are serving the same chemical:

C55    E1    539.85
C55    E1    9458.172
C56    E1    548.7
C56    E1    6869.724
C59    E1    2208.96
C59    E1    3185.8584
C59    E1    847.6884
C59    E1    6949.02
C60    E1    6731.8056
C61    E1    3811.5888
C61    E1    1546.272
C62    E1    13215.2448
C62    E1    543.39
C63    E1    10392.8736
...
C55    E5    1619.55
C55    E5    1619.55
C56    E5    4301.808
C59    E5    6096.7296
C59    E5    1104.48
C59    E5    0
C59    E5    11652.972
C60    E5    8658.2028
C60    E5    529.23
C61    E5    5961.1476
C61    E5    6980.3136
C62    E5    9672.342
C62    E5    1086.78
C63    E5    506.4324
C64    E5    42.0552
...

[download]
Each machine has a max processing capacity to run at 95% of the day (so 24hrs*60mins*60seconds*95%) - this is constant to simplify, and it represents 100% of capacity for each machine.

What you haven't supplied:

  1. The capacity of each nozzle?

    Can we assume they are all the same? Or at least all the same for a given machine?

    Is the flow rate for a nozzle the same for all chemicals or does it vary by chemical?

  2. The maximum capacity of the machines?

    Again, are all the machines the same or do we need difference maximum capacities per machine?

My first pass intuition is that the Greedy approximation method would get pretty close to an optimal solution, and would be pretty fast.

It would certainly serve as a starting point from which you might run a Genetic Algorithm for a few hours or days to see if it can find much by way of further savings.

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In reply to Re^5: Tricky chemicals optimization problem by BrowserUk
in thread Tricky chemicals optimization problem by Anonymous Monk

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