A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm technique for Scheduling Flexible Manufacturing Cells

The aim of this paper is scheduling of flexible manufacturing cell (FMC). These types of production systems combine merit of job shop production and flow shop production systems. FMS Scheduling belongs to the class of problems that are proved to be NP-hard. This paper, first a mathematical model, based on the Liu and McCarthy’s [1] model with a new assumption, is presented and then a hybrid genetic algorithm technique is designed to schedule machines and AGV simultaneously. To generate schedules from a given chromosome, four priority dispatching rules (PDR) are considered. The completion time or makespan is defined as objective function. This algorithm is coded and its results are compared with optimum value obtained from MILP model. The experimental results show that this proposed method performs well in terms of efficiency and quality of solutions.

Keywords:

Scheduling , Flexible Manufacturing Systems , Genetic Algorithm , Dispatching Rule