The job sequencing and tool switching problem is a combinatorial optimisation problem that appears in various industries, mainly in the manufacturing sector. Although tool switching is only part of a much larger decision-making process in manufacturing systems, it has a major impact on the overall performance of the system by affecting the total set-up time as well as the machine and tool utilisation. Over the past few decades, various approaches have been applied to tool switching problems. This study provides a comprehensive review of the literature on the job sequencing and tool switching problem. Studies are identified and compared through a structured literature review and classified according to a new framework which allows the identification of problem perspectives and solution methods. The results show that current research does not fully exploit real-world situations and studies are often limited to a single-machine and uniform tool size and set-up time. Finally, this literature review summarises the current research results and provides directions for future research.. comparatively review, in an organised fashion, the existing unclassified tool switching literature with respect to problem formulation development and applied solution methods, . develop a classification scheme that may help to identify aspects of the tool switching problem that have been insufficiently explored and show how far the existing modelling efforts have progressed towards real-world needs, . synthesise the past trends of tool switching studies, and . offer some suggestions and directions for future research.The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces the generic tool switching problem, its subproblems, and related optimisation problems. Subsequently, the research approach is described in section 3, and the classification framework is described in section 4. The literature review is presented in section 5. Section 6 outlines the research gaps and implications for future research. Section 7 concludes the paper with a short summary.

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