Scheduling of Flexible Manufacturing System by Hybridizing Petri Net with Improved Scatter Search Algorithm

Abstract

The Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs) are highly advanced and integrated with manufacturing systems to produce products. It consists of two or more robots with machining cells and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) that will function under computer control. This paper highlights the importance of using loop layout and planning in FMS by decreasing the backtracking distance and distance traveled by Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV). A hybrid metaheuristic algorithm is used in this paper and it is called as Improved Scatter Search Algorithm (ISSA). The FMS Scheduling is a complex phenomenon due to the huge variability in the working parameters. Problems related to scheduling for general cases are characterized as NP-hard. From the given size of the problem, the computation time required to obtain the optimal schedule mostly will produce exponential results. In this research paper, the dispatching rules are merged with PNs and also PNs with hybrid Improved Scatter Search algorithm for FMSs performance measure. These traditional hybrid techniques were used for comparing and verifying simulation results. Finally, the test problems were chosen from the review paper for better comparison and PN hybrids with Improved Scatter Search algorithm provide better result in terms of machine utilization, AGV idle time and makespan considering with and without breakdown condition when it is compared with dispatching rules and Petri net with dispatching rule techniques.