Bicriteria scheduling of a two-machine flowshop with sequence-dependent setup times

The official published version of the article can be found at the link below.A two-machine flowshop scheduling problem is addressed to minimize setups and makespan where each job is characterized by a pair of attributes that entail setups on each machine. The setup times are sequence-dependent on both machines. It is shown that these objectives conflict, so the Pareto optimization approach is considered. The scheduling problems considering either of these objectives are NP-hard , so exact optimization techniques are impractical for large-sized problems. We propose two multi-objective metaheurisctics based on genetic algorithms (MOGA) and simulated annealing (MOSA) to find approximations of Pareto-optimal sets. The performances of these approaches are compared with lower bounds for small problems. In larger problems, performance of the proposed algorithms are compared with each other. Experimentations revealed that both algorithms perform very similar on small problems. Moreover, it was observed that MOGA outperforms MOSA in terms of the quality of solutions on larger problems.Partial Funding from EPSRC under grant EP/D050863/1

Optimizing production scheduling of steel plate hot rolling for economic load dispatch under time-of-use electricity pricing

Time-of-Use (TOU) electricity pricing provides an opportunity for industrial users to cut electricity costs. Although many methods for Economic Load Dispatch (ELD) under TOU pricing in continuous industrial processing have been proposed, there are still difficulties in batch-type processing since power load units are not directly adjustable and nonlinearly depend on production planning and scheduling. In this paper, for hot rolling, a typical batch-type and energy intensive process in steel industry, a production scheduling optimization model for ELD is proposed under TOU pricing, in which the objective is to minimize electricity costs while considering penalties caused by jumps between adjacent slabs. A NSGA-II based multi-objective production scheduling algorithm is developed to obtain Pareto-optimal solutions, and then TOPSIS based multi-criteria decision-making is performed to recommend an optimal solution to facilitate filed operation. Experimental results and analyses show that the proposed method cuts electricity costs in production, especially in case of allowance for penalty score increase in a certain range. Further analyses show that the proposed method has effect on peak load regulation of power grid.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 4 table

Intelligent systems in manufacturing: current developments and future prospects

Global competition and rapidly changing customer requirements are demanding increasing changes in manufacturing environments. Enterprises are required to constantly redesign their products and continuously reconfigure their manufacturing systems. Traditional approaches to manufacturing systems do not fully satisfy this new situation. Many authors have proposed that artificial intelligence will bring the flexibility and efficiency needed by manufacturing systems. This paper is a review of artificial intelligence techniques used in manufacturing systems. The paper first defines the components of a simplified intelligent manufacturing systems (IMS), the different Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to be considered and then shows how these AI techniques are used for the components of IMS

AI and OR in management of operations: history and trends

The last decade has seen a considerable growth in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for operations management with the aim of finding solutions to problems that are increasing in complexity and scale. This paper begins by setting the context for the survey through a historical perspective of OR and AI. An extensive survey of applications of AI techniques for operations management, covering a total of over 1200 papers published from 1995 to 2004 is then presented. The survey utilizes Elsevier's ScienceDirect database as a source. Hence, the survey may not cover all the relevant journals but includes a sufficiently wide range of publications to make it representative of the research in the field. The papers are categorized into four areas of operations management: (a) design, (b) scheduling, (c) process planning and control and (d) quality, maintenance and fault diagnosis. Each of the four areas is categorized in terms of the AI techniques used: genetic algorithms, case-based reasoning, knowledge-based systems, fuzzy logic and hybrid techniques. The trends over the last decade are identified, discussed with respect to expected trends and directions for future work suggested

An Integrated Solution Approach for Flow Shop Scheduling

This study seeks to integrate Random Key Genetic Algorithm (RKGA) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to compute makespan and solve the Flow Shop Scheduling Problem (FSSP). FSSP is considered as a Multi Criteria Decision Making Problem (MCDM) by setting machines as criteria and jobs as alternatives. RKGA is employed to determine the best weights for the criteria that directly affect the robustness of the solution. The proposed methodology is presented with illustrative example and applied to benchmark problems. The solutions are compared to well-known construction heuristics. The proposed methodology provides the best or reasonable solutions in acceptable computational times

Identification of Patterns in Genetic-Algorithm-Based Solutions for Optimization of Process-Planning Problems Using a Data Mining Tool

This paper presents a novel use of data mining algorithms for extraction of knowledge from a set of process plans. The purpose of this paper is to apply data mining methodologies to explore the patterns in data generated by genetic-algorithm-generating process plans and to develop a rule set planner, which helps to make decisions in odd circumstances. Genetic algorithms are random-search algorithms based on the mechanics of genetics and natural selection. Because of genetic inheritance, the characteristics of the survivors after several generations should be similar. The solutions of a genetic algorithms for process planning consists of the operation sequence of a job, the machine on which each operation is performed, the tool used for performing each operation, and the tool approach direction. Among the optimal or near-optimal solutions, similar relationships may exist between the characteristics of the operation and sequential order. Data mining software known as See5 has been used to explore the relationship between the operation’s sequence and its attributes, and a set of rules has been developed. These rules can predict the positions of operations in the sequence of process planning