Group Scheduling in a Cellular Manufacturing Shop to Minimise Total Tardiness and nT: a Comparative Genetic Algorithm and Mathematical Modelling Approach

In this paper, family and job scheduling in a cellular manufacturing shop is addressed where jobs have individual due dates. The objectives are to minimise total tardiness and the number of tardy jobs. Family splitting among cells is allowed but job splitting is not. Two optimisation methods are employed in order to solve this problem, namely mathematical modelling (MM) and genetic algorithm (GA). The results showed that GA found the optimal solution for most of the problems with high frequency. Furthermore, the proposed GA is efficient compared to the MM especially for larger problems in terms of execution times. Other critical aspects of the problem such as family preemption only, impact of family splitting on common due date scenarios and dual objective scenarios are also solved. In short, the proposed comparative approach provides critical insights for the group scheduling problem in a cellular manufacturing shop with distinctive cases

Joint cell loading and scheduling approach to cellular manufacturing systems

Cataloged from PDF version of article.A hierarchical multi-objective heuristic algorithm and pricing mechanism are developed to first determine the cell loading decisions, and then lot sizes for each item and to obtain a sequence of items comprising the group technology families to be processed at each manufacturing cell that minimise the setup, inventory holding, overtime and tardiness costs simultaneously. The linkage between the different levels is achieved using the proposed pricing mechanism through a set of dual variables associated with the resource and inventory balance constraints, and the feasibility status feedback information is passed between the levels to ensure internally consistent decisions. The computational results indicate that the proposed algorithm is very efficient in finding a compromise solution for a set of randomly generated problems compared with a set of competing algorithms. © 2011 Taylor & Francis

An application of an ethernet based protocol for communication and control in automated manufacturing

The exchange of information in the industrial environment is essential in order to achieve complete integration and control of manufacturing processes. At present the majority of devices present in the shop floor environment are still used as stand alone machines. They do not take advantage of the possibilities offered by a communication link to improve the manufacturing process. The subject of this research has been centered on the development of a simple, flexible and inexpensive support system for communication and control of manufacturing processes. As a result, a system with these features has been proposed and implemented on a simulated workcell. The area footwear manufacturing was chosen for modelling the workcell. The components of the manufacturing support system were developed using an object oriented approach which allowed modularity and software reuse. In order to achieve communication between the components, a communication protocol was developed following the process defined in the rapid protocol implementation framework. Ethernet was selected for implementing the lower levels of the protocol. Java, a new object oriented programming language used for the implementation of the system, showed that it could became a promising language for the implementation of manufacturing applications. In particular the platform independence feature of the language allows the immediate porting of applications to systems with different features. The manufacturing cell simulation had shown that the times associated with the manufacturing support system operations are compatible for its use in applications where the response times are in the order of one second

Design and Management of Manufacturing Systems

Although the design and management of manufacturing systems have been explored in the literature for many years now, they still remain topical problems in the current scientific research. The changing market trends, globalization, the constant pressure to reduce production costs, and technical and technological progress make it necessary to search for new manufacturing methods and ways of organizing them, and to modify manufacturing system design paradigms. This book presents current research in different areas connected with the design and management of manufacturing systems and covers such subject areas as: methods supporting the design of manufacturing systems, methods of improving maintenance processes in companies, the design and improvement of manufacturing processes, the control of production processes in modern manufacturing systems production methods and techniques used in modern manufacturing systems and environmental aspects of production and their impact on the design and management of manufacturing systems. The wide range of research findings reported in this book confirms that the design of manufacturing systems is a complex problem and that the achievement of goals set for modern manufacturing systems requires interdisciplinary knowledge and the simultaneous design of the product, process and system, as well as the knowledge of modern manufacturing and organizational methods and techniques

An investigation of changeover sensitive heuristics in an industrial job shop environment

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A Polyhedral Study of Mixed 0-1 Set

We consider a variant of the well-known single node fixed charge network flow set with constant capacities. This set arises from the relaxation of more general mixed integer sets such as lot-sizing problems with multiple suppliers. We provide a complete polyhedral characterization of the convex hull of the given set

Adapter module for self-learning production systems

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica, Sistemas e ComputadoresThe dissertation presents the work done under the scope of the NP7 Self-Learning project regarding the design and development of the Adapter component as a foundation for the Self-Learning Production Systems (SLPS). This component is responsible to confer additional proprieties to production systems such as lifecycle learning, optimization of process parameters and, above all, adaptation to different production contexts. Therefore, the SLPS will be an evolvable system capable to self-adapt and learn in response to dynamic contextual changes in manufacturing production process in which it operates. The key assumption is that a deeper use of data mining and machine learning techniques to process the huge amount of data generated during the production activities will allow adaptation and enhancement of control and other manufacturing production activities such as energy use optimization and maintenance. In this scenario, the SLPS Adapter acts as a doer and is responsible for dynamically adapting the manufacturing production system parameters according to changing manufacturing production contexts and, most important, according to the history of the manufacturing production process acquired during SLPS run time.To do this, a Learning Module has been also developed and embedded into the SLPS Adapter. The SLPS Learning Module represents the processing unit of the SLPS Adapter and is responsible to deliver Self-learning capabilities relying on data mining and operator’s feedback to up-date the execution of adaptation and context extraction at run time. The designed and implemented SLPS Adapter architecture is assessed and validated into several application scenario provided by three industrial partners to assure industrial relevant self-learning production systems. Experimental results derived by the application of the SLPS prototype into real industrial environment are also presented

Working Notes from the 1992 AAAI Spring Symposium on Practical Approaches to Scheduling and Planning

The symposium presented issues involved in the development of scheduling systems that can deal with resource and time limitations. To qualify, a system must be implemented and tested to some degree on non-trivial problems (ideally, on real-world problems). However, a system need not be fully deployed to qualify. Systems that schedule actions in terms of metric time constraints typically represent and reason about an external numeric clock or calendar and can be contrasted with those systems that represent time purely symbolically. The following topics are discussed: integrating planning and scheduling; integrating symbolic goals and numerical utilities; managing uncertainty; incremental rescheduling; managing limited computation time; anytime scheduling and planning algorithms, systems; dependency analysis and schedule reuse; management of schedule and plan execution; and incorporation of discrete event techniques