Title: An efficient meta-heuristic algorithm for scheduling a two-stage assembly flow shop problem with preventive maintenance activities and reliability approach

Authors: Hany Seidgar; M. Zandieh; Iraj Mahdavi

Addresses: Mazandaran University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 734, Tabarsi Street, Babol, Mazandaran, Iran ' Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Tehran, Iran ' Mazandaran University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 734, Tabarsi Street, Babol, Mazandaran, Iran

Abstract: This paper investigates integrated two-stage assembly flow shop problem with preventive maintenance (PM) activities under the multi-objective optimisation approaches. Reliability models are employed to carry out the maintenance activities. This paper attempts to find the appropriate sequence of jobs on machines in order to minimise the makespan and determining when to perform the PM activities in order to minimise the system unavailability. As this problem is proven to be NP-hard two multi-objective optimisation methods that are named non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) and non-dominated ranking genetic algorithm (NRGA) are employed to find the Pareto-optimal front. The parameters of proposed algorithms are calibrated by artificial neural network (ANN) and the performances of the algorithms on the problem of various sizes are analysed based on four metrics. The computational results reveal NRGA is statistically better than NSGA-II.

Keywords: two-stage assembly flow shops; preventive maintenance; reliability models; system unavailability; multi-objective optimisation; evolutionary algorithms; metaheuristics; scheduling; job sequencing; makespan; NSGA-II; genetic algorithms; NRGA; Pareto-optimal front; artificial neural networks; ANNs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2017.083180

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2017 Vol.26 No.1, pp.16 - 41

Received: 20 Jan 2015
Accepted: 02 May 2015
Published online: 22 Mar 2017 *

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