Design of Loop Layout with Integrated Batch Scheduling in Flexible Manufacturing System: An Approach of Stochastic Heuristics

Abstract

FMS’s seems to be a very promising technology as they provide flexibility, which is essential for many manufacturing companies.FMS can yield a number of dissimilar jobs simultaneously. Each part requires different operations in a certain sequence and workstations can typically perform a variety of operations. In this paper, multi-objective optimization related to FMS scheduling which act as a constraint in configuring the loop layout in optimum manner by various evolutionary algorithms such as Metaheuristics like PSO, SA etc. The first one is connected with batch scheduling problem (BSP). The next objective is emphasis on determination of optimum machine sequence with minimum total transportation cost. In this paper the authors made an attempt to consider machine arrangements in an optimum sequence with flexible batch scheduling as constraints in an FMS. The various loop layout problems are tested for enactment of objective function with respect to computational time and number of iterations involved in SA and PSO. A necessary code is generated in C++ and the code is run by the IDE tool in which C++ compiler used as plug in. The results of the above optimization algorithms are tabulated and it is concluded that for make span PSO is better than SA, whereas for total transportation cost SA is better than PSO.