Proposed a Novel Group Scheduling Problem in a Cellular Manufacturing System

Abstract

This paper presents a new integrated mathematical model for a cellular manufacturing system and production planning. The aim of this model is to minimize machine purchasing, intra-cell material handling, cell reconfiguration and setup costs. The presented model forms the manufacturing cells and determines the quantity of machines and movements at each period of time that minimizes the aforementioned costs. It is so difficult to find an optimal solution in a reasonable time. Thus, we design and develop a meta-heuristic algorithm based on a genetic algorithm (GA). This proposed algorithm is evaluated, and the related results confirm the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed GA to provide good solutions, especially for medium and large-sized problems.