Abstract
Welding frames with differing geometries is one of the most crucial stages in the production of high-end bicycles. This paper proposes a parallel algorithm and a mixed integer linear programming formulation for scheduling a two-machine robotic welding station. The time complexity of the introduced parallel method is O(log2n) on an n3-processor Exclusive Read Exclusive Write Parallel Random-Access Machine (EREW PRAM), where n is the problem size. The algorithm is designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards to significantly accelerate the computations. To present the benefits of the parallelization, the algorithm is compared to the state of art sequential method and a solver-based approach. Experimental results show an impressive speedup for larger problem instances—up to 314 on a single Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), compared to a single-threaded CPU execution of the sequential algorithm.
Highlights
Scheduling problems are strongly connected to real-life production systems
This paper presents a parallel exact algorithm designed to employ multiprocessor environments, such as modern Graphic Processing Units (GPUs), drastically reducing the computation time required to solve larger problem instances
The paper considered Cyclic Assignment Problem (CAP) in a two machine robotic cell, the problem inspired by a bicycle frame welding station
Summary
Scheduling problems are strongly connected to real-life production systems. For cyclic (periodic) manufacturing, even a small improvement achieved by using dedicated algorithms can lead to significant profits. Job scheduling problems in flexible production systems are a interesting subject of research, as indicated by numerous publications analyzed in the literature reviews [1,2,3]. Optimization often involves the assignment of operations (jobs) to machines, and the order in which they are performed. Exact algorithms such as Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) [4] can be used to solve some (usually simpler) problems. For the NP-difficult ones, for instance, the Traveling
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