Recent trends in globalization have led to an increase in competition between manufacturers across many industries that are producing new products with shorter life cycles. The success of these manufacturers is largely due to not only to how quickly they can get these products to market but also how quickly they can produce these products at full volume. This has led to a need for efficient production ramp-up techniques that can determine optimal resource allocation plans for a manufacturing system. This research seeks to develop a method which determines the optimal machine allocation strategy during the ramp-up in a job shop environment. The method uses optimization and simulation techniques to arrive at a solution which is both optimal and robust. The technique is then applied to a case study to demonstrate its use and effectiveness in determining a solution. Such a solution would provide a manufacturing system’s decision makers with a production ramp-up strategy that would minimize cost and allow the system to produce the throughput required by its end customers.