Title: Robust optimisation to design a dynamic cellular manufacturing system integrating group layout and workers' assignment

Authors: Mohsen Lashgari; Reza Kia; Fariborz Jolai

Addresses: School of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran ' Department of Logistics, Tourism, and Service Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, German University of Technology in Oman (GUtech), Muscat, Oman; Department of Industrial Engineering, Firoozkooh Branch, Islamic Azad University, Firoozkooh, Iran ' School of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: In this paper, a robust optimisation approach is proposed to solve a mathematical model integrating cell formation, group layout and operators assignment decisions under a dynamic situation. The main aim of applying a robust approach is to obtain an optimal design of a cellular manufacturing system that is robust with respect to encountered uncertainties in part demands and processing times. The integrated model incorporates several design attributes including operations sequence, group layout, equal-area facilities multi-rows layout, flexible cell reconfiguration, operators hiring/firing and training, operator available time, limitations of cell size and uncertain processing times and part demands. Two illustrative numerical examples are solved to investigate the validity of the robust model. Regarding the NP-hardness of the proposed model, an efficient simulated annealing algorithm is implemented. Some test problems either generated randomly or taken from the literature are solved and the results are compared with the ones obtained using CPLEX. [Received: 31 May 2019; Accepted: 3 May 2020]

Keywords: dynamic cellular manufacturing system; robust optimisation; group layout; worker assignment; mixed-integer nonlinear program; simulated annealing.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIE.2021.115172

European Journal of Industrial Engineering, 2021 Vol.15 No.3, pp.319 - 351

Received: 31 Jul 2019
Accepted: 03 May 2020
Published online: 21 May 2021 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article