The application of Activity Based Costing (ABC) approach to select the set-machine
that is used in the production of Flexible Manufacture System (FMS) based on technical and
economical criteria can be useful for producers to design FMS by considering the minimum
production cost. In the other hand, Heuristic Search is known to have a short searching time.
Algorithm Heuristic that using ABC approach as the weight in finding the solution to shorten
the equipment selection time during the design / redesign process of the FMS in less than
exponential time was designed in this research. The increasing speed is useful because with the
faster time in design / redesign process, therefore the flexibility level of part variety that can be
processed will become better
Theoretical and empirical analysis in Algorithm Heuristic shows that time searching to get
appropriate set of equipment is not too long, so that we can assume that the designed Algorithm
Heuristic can be implemented in the real world. By comparing the empirical result of Algorithm
Heuristic to the Algorithm Exhaustive, we can also assume that Algorithm Heuristic that using
ABC method as the weight for finding solution can optimise the equipment selection problem of
FMS based on economical criteria too.