Solution Algorithms for Storage Facilities Usage Optimization

Abstract

AbstractIn this work we address the problem of planning a temporary storage area in a shampoo production system. Here, the production process consists of three successive steps: the making, the temporary storage and the packing. This temporary storage area consists of parallel temporary storage units with distinct capacities. The storage operation of a job, also called a batch, has to answer time restrictions such as release dates, due dates, family dependent setup times and time lags, and also a space constraint which is the capacity of the temporary storage unit. The goal is to schedule the batches on the storage units in order to minimize the total setup times and the maximum lateness. First, we model the problem on a single storage unit a two-machine flowshop with a limited buffer capacity. Next we provide three heuristics: a greedy algorithm, a hybrid heuristic based on Ant Colony Optimization and Simulated Annealing and finally a dedicated heuristic. The latter strongly exploits the structural properties shown in this paper. We provide experimental results of the evaluation on wide range instances of these heuristics. The results highlight the efficiency of the dedicated heuristic by comparison to the two others.