Title: Allocation of parts to cells, minimising tardiness and idle time by simulated annealing

Authors: R. Tavakkoli-Moghaddam, M. Rabbani, A. Ghodratnama, P.K. Ahmed

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran. ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran. ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tehran, Iran. ' Wolverhampton Business School, University of Wolverhampton, UK

Abstract: This paper investigates an allocation of parts to common and specific cells and it also presents a mathematical programming model comprising of constraints such as available time for common and special cells in each time horizon, and variables such as excess time required by each cell to process parts in each period. The objective of the model is to minimise the total tardiness in production of goods and the sum of idle times of machines in each cell. Due to its complexity, a simulated annealing (SA) method is utilised. To verify the quality and efficiency of the SA algorithm, ten test problems with different parameter values are used to analyse and test the efficiency of the proposed SA method. Finally, results are compared with solutions obtained by Lingo 6 and computation time for each test problem.

Keywords: cellular manufacturing systems; common cells; special cells; total tardiness; idle times; simulated annealing; manufacturing cells; part allocation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMTM.2005.007705

International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management, 2005 Vol.7 No.5/6, pp.581 - 593

Published online: 02 Sep 2005 *

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