Integration of cell formation and job sequencing to minimize energy consumption with minimum make-span

Abstract

Cell formation is the fundamental step while designing a cellular manufacturing system. Integration of job sequencing with cell formation can attain lower make-spans. The traditional cell formation and scheduling problems consider performance indicators such as productivity, time and flexibility in cellular manufacturing system; however, energy consumption has not been given due attention. Therefore, this research addressed the minimization of total energy consumption by implementing an energy-efficient schedule at the cell formation stage of cellular manufacturing system. For this purpose, a two-phase approach is proposed; in phase I, formation of independent cells is being carried out by considering energy-efficient routings and genetic algorithm is used for improving search performance. In phase II, a formulation is being developed to compute the total energy of the system based on optimal job sequence with respect to minimum idle running of the machines in each independent cell. For the proposed approach, a code is being developed in MATLAB software. Different sample problems have been evaluated. The results showed that the proposed approach is effective in generating independent cells and sequences with minimum energy consumption and make-span.