Title: Buffer size decision for Flexible Transfer Line with Rework Paths using Genetic Algorithm

Authors: Jaber Abu Qudeiri, Hidehiko Yamamoto, Rizauddin Ramli

Addresses: Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Laboratory, Faculty of engineering, Gifu University, Yanagido 1-1, Gifu Shi, Japan. ' Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Laboratory, Faculty of engineering, Gifu University, Yanagido 1-1, Gifu Shi, Japan. ' Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Laboratory, Faculty of engineering, Gifu University, Yanagido 1-1, Gifu Shi, Japan

Abstract: The buffer size decision for the Flexible Transfer Line (FTL) gains more and more importance because of growing FTL complexity. The buffer size in front of the bay of machines in the FTL is still one of the major optimisation problems faced by production engineers. In this article, we attempt to find the optimal buffer size for FTL with Rework Paths (FTL-RP) that achieves the best throughput of the FTL-RP. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) is presented to find buffer size of FTL-RP. To estimate FTL-RP performance, the well-known decomposition approach is used to find the throughput of the FTL-RP at a given buffer size. In order to achieve the efficient use of the GA, we propose the Multiple Vectors Distribution Method (MVDM) for the genes arrangement.

Keywords: buffer size; flexible transfer lines; FTL; genetic algorithms; GAs; rework paths; optimisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISTA.2009.026089

International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications, 2009 Vol.7 No.2, pp.227 - 240

Published online: 26 May 2009 *

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