A Multi-Objective Mixed-Model Assembly Line Sequencing Problem With Stochastic Operation Time

In today’s competitive market, those producers who can quickly adapt themselves todiverse demands of customers are successful. Therefore, in order to satisfy these demands of market, Mixed-model assembly line (MMAL) has an increasing growth in industry. A mixed-model assembly line (MMAL) is a type of production line in which varieties of products with common base characteristics are assembled on. This paper focuses on this type of production line in a stochastic environment with three objective functions: 1) total utility work cost, 2) total idle cost, and 3) total production rate variation cost that are simultaneously considered.  In real life, especially in manual assembly lines, because of some inevitable human mistakes, breakdown of machines, lack of motivation in workers and the things alike, events are notdeterministic, sowe consideroperation time as a stochastic variable independently distributed with normal distributions; for dealing with it, chance constraint optimization is used to model the problem. At first, because of NP-hard nature of the problem, multi-objective harmony search (MOHS) algorithm is proposed to solve it. Then, for evaluating the performance of the proposed algorithm, it is compared with NSGA-II that is a powerful and famous algorithm in this area. At last, numerical examples for comparing these two algorithms with some comparing metrics are presented. The results have shown that MOHS algorithm has a good performance in our proposed model

A simheuristic for bi-objective stochastic permutation flow shop scheduling problem

This paper addresses the stochastic permutation flow shop problem (SPFSP) in which the stochastic parameters are the processing times. This allows the modeling of setups and machine breakdowns. Likewise, it is proposed a multi-objective greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP) coupled with Monte-Carlo Simulation to obtain expected makespan and expected tardiness. To manage the bi-objective function, a sequential combined method is considered in the construction phase of the meta-heuristic. Moreover, the local Search combines 2-optimal interchanges with a Pareto Archived Evolution Strategy (PAES) to obtain the Pareto front. Also, some Taillard benchmark instances of deterministic permutation flow shop problem were adapted in order to include the variation in processing times. Accordingly, two coefficients of variation (CVs) were tested: one depending on expected processing times values defined as twice the expected processing time of a job, and a fixed value of 0.25. Thus, the computational results on benchmark instances show that the variable CV provided lower values of the expected makespan and tardiness, while the con-stant CV presented higher expected measures. The computational results present insights for further analysis on the behavior of stochastic scheduling problems for a better approach in real-life scenarios at industrial and service systems

Diseño de una metaheurística GRASP hibridizada con la metodología PAES y la simulación de Monte Carlo en un ambiente Flexible Flow Shop estocástico multi-objetivo

El propósito de este proyecto es estudiar un problema de programación de la producción multiobjetivo en un ambiente Flexible Flow Shop (FFS) estocástico. Los objetivos a minimizar son el valor esperado de la tardanza, la desviación estándar de la tardanza, el valor esperado del tiempo total de terminación y la desviación estándar del tiempo total de terminación. Los parámetros estocásticos son los tiempos entre fallas de las máquinas y los tiempos de reparación de las máquinas. Como método de solución, se propone una simheurística, la cual hibridiza la metaheurística GRASP con la simulación de Monte Carlo y el algoritmo PAES para obtener la frontera de Pareto. Inicialmente, se realiza un diseño experimental de la versión determinística del problema para evaluar el desempeño de la simheurística, comparando los resultados de la simheurística con el tiempo total de terminación obtenido en la programación de los trabajos con la regla de despacho FL, y la tardanza con la regla de despacho ENS2. Un segundo diseño de experimentos es diseñado para evaluar los efectos de los diferentes coeficientes de variación y la distribución de probabilidad para ambos parámetros estocásticos en las cuatro funciones objetivo del caso estocástico. Para el caso estocástico, los resultados arrojaron que ambas distribuciones de probabilidad y coeficientes de variación tienen un efecto significativo en las variables, lo que demuestra la importancia de un ajuste preciso de las distribuciones de probabilidad para obtener soluciones adecuadas.To achieve a higher level of efficiency within a manufacturing industry, the production scheduling is essential, because this process is crucial for the maximization of the business value. Currently, a big part of literature in scheduling is focused on solving a deterministic problem to minimize the makespan. Given that, realistically, the industry is exposed to random events that can affect its performance, the aim of this project is to study a multi-objective stochastic Flexible Flow Shop (FFS) environment. The objectives to minimize are expected value of tardiness, standard deviation of tardiness, expected value of total completion time (equal to flowtime due to release times are zero) and standard deviation of total completion time. The stochastics parameters are the times between failures and times to repair the machines (duration of machine breakdowns). As solution method, a simheuristic is proposed, which hybridizes the metaheuristic Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedures (GRASP) with the Monte Carlo simulation and Pareto Archived Evolution Strategy (PAES) algorithm to obtain the Pareto frontier (see illustration 2). A first experimental design is done to test the simheuristic performance for the deterministic version (see illustration 1) of the problem by comparing the results of the simheuristic with the flowtime obtained by scheduling the jobs with FL dispatching rule, and the tardiness with the ENS2 dispatching rule. A second design of experiments is designed to evaluate the effects of different coefficients of variation and probability distribution of both stochastic parameters in the four objective functions of the stochastic case. To do both experimental designs 324 benchmark instances were evaluated in both cases. Results show, that for the deterministic case, the metaheuristic presents an average improvement of 3% in flowtime against FL rule, 2% in tardiness against ENS2 rule. For the stochastic case, results show that both probability distributions and coefficient of variation have a significant effect in the four response variables, which shows the importance of an accurate fitting of probability distributions to obtain adequate solutions.Ingeniero (a) IndustrialPregrad