In many manufacturing systems, parts must be fed to automatic machines in a specific orientation. This is often accomplished by what are known as part orienting systems (POS). Such a system may consist of one or more separate devices that orient parts usually with multiple orientations. A theoretical analysis along with the development of some heuristic algorithms is carried out in order to treat the problem of efficient selection and ordering of part orienting devices that make up a POS. It is indicated that the size of such problems can be quite large in the context of flexible manufacturing systems which may require what are known as flexible part orienting systems for their efficient operation. Computational experiments are performed in order to evaluate the relative performance of the heuristic algorithms.