Title: An integrated tool planning and production planning problem for flexible manufacturing systems using genetic algorithm

Authors: Zubair M. Mohamed, Manish Bachlaus

Addresses: Department of Management, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY 42101, USA. ' Department of Manufacturing Engineering, Research Promotion Cell, National Institute of Foundry & Forge Technology, Ranchi, 834003, India

Abstract: This paper presents a novel concept of integrating tool planning and production planning problems in flexible manufacturing system. A mathematical objective function has been formulated that minimises the broad objectives of total costs comprising various parameters such as tool room capacity, tool budget, tool regrinding and procurement lead times, ordering, setup, holding and back-ordering costs of tools and parts. This paper explores the integrating notion by utilising the genetic-based search methodology. An illustrative example is taken into account for demonstrating the robustness of the proposed model. Genetic Algorithm (GA) has been implemented in the example under consideration and its performance is compared with Tabu Search (TS) and Simulated Annealing (SA). The extensive computations over the problems of varying complexities and dimensions prove the superiority of genetic algorithm. It has been observed that GA outperforms the standard algorithms (TS and SA) in the context of the underlying problem.

Keywords: production planning; tool planning; cost; inventory; genetic algorithms; flexible manufacturing systems; FMS planning; tabu search; simulated annealing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISTA.2007.014033

International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications, 2007 Vol.2 No.4, pp.389 - 415

Published online: 12 Jun 2007 *

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