In our initial flow-allocation mode

In our initial flow-allocation model, we assumed full flexibility in assigning workload among the duplicates of the same department.In practice, this could mean splitting orders for a single product among several duplicates, smaller batches, and longer and more frequent setups.Order splitting could also delay shipping completed orders because the batches of the same order were not synchronized.To address this problem, one would need to capture setup minimization in the objective function or place additional constraints on flow allocation to prevent order splitting.