Two approaches to car sequencing in the paint shop

Abstract

The problem of car sequencing has been considered in the literature many times, but very often with the assumption of many simplifications, which meant that the discussed issue was far from the problems occurring in reality. The article presents an attempt to capture the real problem of sequencing, in particular in paint shop, because from the point of view of economic indicators, painting process is today a complex, multistage, extremely energy consuming and cost intensive operation. The main goal is therefore to minimize the number of costly changeovers of painting guns, resulting from color changes and synchronize those with periodic cleanings, forced by technological requirements. For this purpose, a buffer located in the paint shop is applied. In the paper a game-theoretic framework is presented to analyze the considered problem. Two games: Buffer Slot Assignment Game and Buffer-OutShuttle are compared with algorithms based on priority rules. Based on the performed simulations the effectivity of presented algorithms is verified using several datasets.