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International Journal of Production Research

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Scheduling in cellular manufacturing systems: an heuristic approach

S. Venkataramanaiah
a a

Operations Management and Quantitative Techniques Area, Indian Institute of Management Indore, Pigdamber, Rau, Indore453 331, India Version of record first published: 19 Nov 2007.

To cite this article: S. Venkataramanaiah (2008): Scheduling in cellular manufacturing systems: an heuristic approach, International Journal of Production Research, 46:2, 429-449 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207540601138577

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International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 46, No. 2, 15 January 2008, 429449

Scheduling in cellular manufacturing systems: an heuristic approach

S. VENKATARAMANAIAH*

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Operations Management and Quantitative Techniques Area, Indian Institute of Management Indore, Pigdamber, Rau, Indore 453 331, India

(Revision received November 2006) Adopting cellular manufacturing, which enables achieving the goals of just-in-time (JIT) philosophy, has benefited many world-class organizations. Many approaches have been developed for the design of cellular manufacturing systems (CMS). Scheduling of parts and part families in CMS is an important issue. In this study scheduling in flowline-based CMS is addressed by considering varying degrees of missing operations for parts in a cell. A simulated annealing (SA)-based algorithm has been developed for scheduling of parts within a cell for the objective of minimization of weighted sum of makespan, flowtime and idletime. The algorithm makes use of a pool of nine popularly used dispatching rules in scheduling literature. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated using an alternative algorithm with three dispatching rules, and has been proposed and evaluated for minimization of weighted sum of makespan, flowtime and idletime. The proposed algorithm was also evaluated considering two benchmark algorithms, NEH heuristic for minimization of makespan and RC heuristic for minimization of flowtime. From the limited experimental results, it is found that the performance of the proposed algorithm with a larger pool of dispatching rules performs better than the three algorithms tested. Based on the results of the study, it is also found that the operational performance of CMS depends on the percentage of missing operations and scheduling approach (such as dispatching rules) used. Keywords: Cellular manufacturing; Flowline; Heuristic; Missing operations; Scheduling

1. Introduction The manufacturing environment may be broadly classified as a hierarchial process of design, manufacture and shipment of finished products. Cellular manufacturing (CM) is defined as the implementation of the group technology (GT) principles in a manufacturing environment (Shafer and Charnes 1995, Suer et al. 1999). The cellular manufacturing system (CMS) is the physical division of the manufacturing facilities. It aims at grouping parts/jobs with similar processing requirements and machines, which are dissimilar in nature, into part families and cells, respectively. CM involves processing a collection of similar parts on a dedicated group of
*Email: svenkat@iimidr.ac.in
International Journal of Production Research ISSN 00207543 print/ISSN 1366588X online 2008 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/00207540601138577

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machines or manufacturing processes called a cell (Ham et al. 1985). CMS presents the basis for advanced manufacturing systems such as just-in-time (JIT), flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), and computer integrated manufacturing systems (CIMS) (Gunasekaran et al. 1994, Akturk and Wilson 1998). CMS is more suitable for scenarios between mass production and job production. CMS is used to address medium product variety and medium product volume (i.e. mid volume and mid variety situation), whereas mass production is suitable for limited variety and relatively large volume products. The performance of cells in CMS is characterized by the organization of the resources (flowshop or jobshop) extent of missing operations, i.e. some or all the parts may not require operations on all machines in a cell. The degree of missing operations is captured in the form of the percentage of missing operations (PMO). In this study, we adopt the definition given by Sridhar and Rajendran (1993, 1996) for PMO, which is defined as the ratio of number of zero process time elements to total number of possible operations (i.e. m n). PMO is 100% if every part requires operation on every machine in a cell, otherwise it is less than 100%. The resources in the cell can be organized as a flowshop or jobshop. The adaptation of CMS has several advantages such as reduced set-up times, faster throughput times, improved product quality, simplified material flow and reduced material handling, reduced work in process (WIP) inventory, better control of cell activities, etc (Dumolien and Santen 1983, Wemmerlov and Hyer 1989, Sridhar and Rajendran 1996, Wemmerlov and Johnson 1997). There are many studies related to the cell formation problem in the context of CMS. From the empirical studies of Hyer and Wemmerlov (1989) and Marsh et al. (1999), it is found that the importance of CMS is growing, but the literature on GT/CMS is not specific with regard to how the production plan is actually obtained (Akturk and Wilson 1998). The problems in CMS can be categorized broadly into cell design and operational. Cell design problems include cell formation, and layout of cells whereas operational problems include loading and scheduling of parts (Gheware 2000). The loading problem arises whenever there is an alternate resource or process available for performing an activity. For example, if a given part family has more than one eligible cell that can perform the required operations then allocating the given part family to a more appropriate cell is nothing but cell loading and determination of order of jobs/parts within the part family to perform in the selected (or loaded) cell and determination of their start and finish times is referred to as scheduling. Cell loading in CMS determines the kind of items and quantities to be produced in each cell in the specified time period subject to the production capacity and demand. One of the desirable properties of CMS is unidirectional flow within a cell (Morris and Tersine 1989). From the past studies (Morris and Tersine 1989, Shafer and Charnes 1995, Suer et al. 1999) it is observed that several factors influence the loading problem in CMS. Hence CMS needs efficient production planning systems in order to benefit from the advantages of GT/CMS. Some of these problems are addressed by developing suitable mixed integer LP models or hierarchical production planning approaches (Akturk and Wilson 1998). Scheduling in CMS is an important function and deals with the allocation of operations over time in a cell through several workstations once a product/family has been assigned. This includes the determination of start and finish times, lot sizes

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and transfer sizes, etc. Finding the order of products in a cell might be included among the cell scheduling tasks. Many researchers (Ham et al. 1985, Flynn 1987, Morris and Tersine 1989, Logendran and Nudtasomboon 1991, Wemmerlov and Vakharia 1991, Rajendran 1994, Shafer and Charnes 1995, Akturk and Wilson 1998, Suer et al. 1999, Gheware 2000, Schaller 2000, Rajendran and Zeigler 2001, 2005, Pugazhendhi et al. 2002) have investigated how the operating procedures affect the relative advantage of CMS. Ham et al. (1985) proposed an integer program model for flowshop scheduling to include group scheduling in a flowline manufacturing cell. The procedure generates optimal permutation schedules for small size problems. Flynn (1987) showed that the performance of cellular layout depends on the job scheduling procedures used. Logendran and Nudtasomboon (1991) have discussed scheduling in CMS as a flowline cell for makespan minimization. Vakharia and Chang (1990) and Skorin-Karpov and Vakharia (1993) applied simulated annealing and tabu search to the flowline group-scheduling problem. Sridhar and Rajendran (1996) have addressed scheduling in CMS using genetic algorithms (GA) with multiple objectives (makespan, flowtime, and idletime) by modifying the recursive relation given by Logendran and Nudtasomboon (1991) for flowshop scheduling. The modified recursive relation considers missing operations in the CMS environment. Akturk and Wilson (1998) proposed a hierarchical production planning model for cell loading to minimize variable production cost with capacity constraint. The authors reported that the number of cells and part families affects the system performance. Suer et al. (1999) have studied the impact of cell loading and scheduling considering the entire system and reported that no single rule performed better in terms of multiple performance measures. Schaller (2000) proposed heuristics for scheduling in flowline-manufacturing cells and reported that interchange heuristic outperformed many existing algorithms for makespan minimization. Rajendran and Ziegler (2001) investigated the performance of dispatching rules and heuristics for scheduling in a static flowshop with missing operations for minimization of total flowtime. It is reported that dispatching rules performed better over heuristics at a relatively higher level of 20% (and above) of missing operations (PMO). Effective scheduling is crucial to good performance of jobshop where a large variety of parts is produced. In CMS a small variety of somewhat similar parts are typically produced. Cell performance is very important in certain cases such as multiple part families; setup times between part families are significant and/or the cell is operating at its capacity. Under these conditions, the choice of scheduling rule can have a strong impact on cell performance (Frazier 1996). Frazier (1996) showed that simple rules perform poorly over combination rules. There is no single rule that performs better across multiple performance measures. Hence, a pool of dispatching rules could be used for scheduling jobs/parts in CMS. From the past academic research studies and empirical findings, it is found that the importance is growing in the area of performance analysis of CMS. The current study addresses scheduling in flowline-based CMS with missing operations for minimization of weighted sum of makespan, flowtime and idletime. The description of the problem is given in the following section. In section 3, an heuristic approach for scheduling in CMS is explained and illustrated with a numerical example. The performance evaluation of the proposed algorithm is presented in section 4 and finally conclusions and future work are outlined in section 5.

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2. Problem definition The problem considered in this study pertains to scheduling of parts in a flowlinebased cell with missing operations. One of the common assumptions made in many studies is that all jobs require processing on all machines in a flowshop. This need not be the case in many real-life situations. Some or all jobs may have missing operations on some machines. Such a situation is frequently encountered in flowline-based manufacturing cells of a CMS. This is called a flowline-based manufacturing cell with missing operations, i.e. certain parts do not require processing on some of the machines in a cell (Rajendran and Ziegler 2001). The extent of missing operations is quantified by PMO. PMO is defined as the ratio of number of zero process time elements to the total number of elements in the cell. The cell consists of M machines, arranged as a flowline, dedicated for processing a part family with N parts whose processing time is tij for part i on machine j. The objective is to find sequence and schedule of jobs that minimize the weighted sum of makespan (MS), flowtime (FT) and idletime (IT). The above three objectives are considered simultaneously since all these measures are important and affect the cell performance. The objective of minimization of makespan, flowtime and idletime is the reduction of scheduling cost (French 1982, Sridhar and Rajendran 1996). The objective of minimizing flowtime helps in minimizing WIP inventory, idletime minimization helps better utilization of resources, etc. The following assumptions have been made in this study. . Cell composition is known a priori (i.e. number of machines (M), number of parts (N) and process times (tij) in the cell are known in advance). . All the machines in a cell have adequate capacity and are arranged as a flowline and process parts from only one family. . All jobs/parts are available simultaneously and process time is known and deterministic and includes setup time. . No breakdown of resources is considered and once an operation starts is completed fully without any interruption. . Part demand and sequence of operations is known in advance and parts visit a machine only if an operation is required on that machine (i.e. missing operations are considered). Logendran and Nudtasomboon (1991) have scheduled jobs in a flowline-based CMS using a recursive relation that holds good for the flowshop environment where zero processing time is assumed for a part and a schedule is found. Sridhar and Rajendran (1996) have identified the limitation of Logendran and Nudtasomboons (1991) recursive relation due to the presence of missing operations and proposed a modified recursive relation. The motivation for this is that it captures the missing operations phenomena where the last operation of different jobs need not be on the same machine. In a CMS, all parts/jobs in a part family need not be processed on all machines in a cell, i.e. a job/part can have missing operations on some machines. This kind of situation is termed as CMS with missing operations. In CMS, the cells can be organized as a flowshop or jobshop (Rajendran and Ziegler 2001). In this study, the modified recursive relation given by Sridhar and Rajendran (1996) for scheduling jobs in a flowline-based cell with missing operations has been used.

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In many practical cases dispatching rules have been used in generating the schedules, which are more appropriate to achieve shopfloor performance measures such as minimization of WIP, lead time, etc. (Blackstone et al. 1982, Gheware 2000, Schaller 2000). One of the means of generating general schedules is the use of dispatching rules. The use of dispatching rules is the easiest, simplest and most popular approach to scheduling jobs in real life situations. The choice of dispatching rules has a significant impact on operational performance (Frazier 1996). Rajendran and Ziegler (2001) have suggested the use of dispatching rules for scheduling jobs with missing operations in a flowline-based CMS environment. Based on the preliminary studies and past research on CMS the following nine widely used dispatching rules have been used in development of the proposed algorithm. (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i) Shortest processing time (SPT). Largest processing time (LPT). Maximum number of operations (MNOP). First in first out (FIFO). Random selection (RAND). Process time WINQ (PT WINQ). 2PT WINQ NPT. Completion time (C-Time). Minimum process time per operation (MPTPO).

SPT rule selects a job with shortest process time from the waiting jobs. This rule is commonly used as a benchmark rule in many studies (Rajendran and Ziegler 2001: 625). This rule is efficient for minimizing the mean flowtime and effective in minimizing WIP inventory etc. The LPT rule chooses a job with largest processing time, which is opposite to SPT rule. The MNOP rule selects a job for processing with maximum number of operations. The FIFO rule selects a job from the queue based on the part index. FIFO is simple to use and is used as a benchmark rule in many studies. This rule is used for breaking the ties as well. RAND chooses a job randomly from the queue and is also used as a benchmark rule (Rajendran and Ziegler 2001). PT WINQ was developed by Holthaus and Rajendran (1997) where PT is process time and WINQ represents the work content of jobs in the queue of the next operation. PT WINQ is a simple additive combination of the process time and work-content of jobs in the queue of next operation of a job. The implementation of this rule is done by defining the priority value for job i. The priority value for job i is defined as Zi tij Wi. The job with the least Zi is chosen for processing. This rule seeks to exploit the advantages of the SPT and WINQ rules, thereby aiming at the minimization of mean flowtime of jobs. This rule outperforms SPT rule for minimizing mean flowtime of jobs. 2PT WINQ NPT rule is similar to PT WINQ with the additional term NPT representing the processing time of the next operation. The motivation for this rule is the observation that the SPT rule tends to delay the completion times of jobs that have relatively large process times and hence results in a large value of maximum flowtime and variance of flowtime. In order to minimize the total flowtime of all jobs their completion times are kept to a minimum on all machines in the flowshop so that succeeding jobs wait for a minimum period (Rajendran and Ziegler 1997). Implementation of this rule requires an index Zi 2tij WINQK tik. The job with the least Zi is chosen for processing. The completion time (C-Time) rule selects parts

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based on expected time of completion. The MPTPO rule chooses a job whose processing time per operation is kept to a minimum. This rule considers the distribution of process time across the machines in the system and schedules jobs with a minimum per operation time. The steps of the proposed heuristic are described in the following section.

3. Heuristic approach

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The scheduling problem in CMS is NP-hard and finding the optimal solution is computationally prohibitive (Schaller 2000). In many cases, acceptable solutions are generated using efficient heuristics (Sridhar and Rajendran 1996, Suer et al. 1999 etc.). Simulated annealing (SA) is one of the methods that has been employed to solve scheduling problems. The SA algorithm was first proposed by Kirkpatrick et al. (1983). The generic procedure for the minimization problem is given below. 1. Get an initial seed solution S. 2. Get an initial temperature To40. 3. While not frozen do the following: 3.1 Perform the following loop L times. 3.1.1 Pick a random neighbour, S0 of S. 3.1.2 Let Cost(S0 ) Cost(S). 3.1.3 If 0 (downhill move), set S S0 . 3.1.4 If 40 (uphill move) set S S0 if a sampled uniform random number is e/T. 3.2 Set T T r (reduce temperature). 4. Return S and stop. In this study, a simulated annealing (SA)-based algorithm is proposed for scheduling parts in flowline-based CMS with missing operations. Nine popularly used dispatching rules (described in section 2) have been employed to find order/ schedule of parts that minimizes weighted sum of makespan, flowtime and idletime. The solution obtained at each stage of the process is evaluated using relation e1 e2 where e1 and e2 are given by relations     MS1 minMS1 , MS2 FT1 minFT1 , FT2 e1 !1 !2 minMS1 , MS2 minFT1 , FT2   IT1 minIT1 , IT2 ... !3 minIT1 , IT2     MS2 minMS1 , MS2 FT2 minFT1 , FT2 !2 e2 !1 minMS1 , MS2 minFT1 , FT2   IT2 minIT1 , IT2 !3 ... minIT1 , IT2 1

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MS1, FT1 and IT1 represent makespan, flowtime and idletime of solution S1, respectively. Similarly, MS2, FT2 and IT2 denote makespan, flowtime and idletime of solution S2, respectively. The scheduler can choose suitable weights for makespan (!1), flowtime (!2), and idletime (!3). This recursive relation, given by Sridhar and Rajendran (1996) has been employed when scheduling parts since it captures the relative percentage increase in the performance measures considered. This is generally used to evaluate the solution obtained at different steps as well as different algorithms. Further, e1 represents the relative percentage increase in makespan, flowtime and idletime of solution (S1) in comparison with solution (S2). Similarly e2 represents the relative percent increase in makespan, flowtime and idletime of solution (S2) in comparison with solution (S1). For sake of simplicity and to give an equal importance to all the three objectives the values for !1, !2, and !3 are assumed as 0.33. These values were considered based on the study by Sridhar and Rajendran (1996). The following terms are used in the proposed algorithm: seed_sq seed_sol best_sol best_sq n_seq n_sol Pacc u To, Tf FC Sequence of parts generated from dispatching rules a to i generated at random. The value e1 as defined in (2). The solution corresponding to the best sequence. The seed_sq that gives the best solution. The next random sequence of dispatching rules generated. The solution of n_seq. Probability of acceptance. Uniformly distributed random number. Initial and final temperature, respectively. Freeze counter (is used to denote frozen state) and is incremented by 1 if Pacc is less than or equal to 0.15 (which is determined based on the preliminary study and guidelines given in the literature (Rajendran 1993)). Temperature reduction factor.

3.1 Steps of heuristic algorithm Step 1:Initialization (seed_sq) 1.0 Read the cell composition of machines and parts in a cell 1.1 Generate the initial sequence seed_sq 1.2 Find the objective function value (using relation 2) of seed_sol 1.3 Assign the value to best_sol 1.4 Store seed_sq as best_sq 1.5 Initialize T To, Freeze 0 Step 2:Improvement/search phase 2.1 If (freeze FC or T Tf) goto step 3 Else 2.2 Total 0, accept 0 2.3 If (Total itr) goto step 2.4 2.3.1 Perturb the seed_sq using dispatching rules ai

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Total Total 1 Evaluate n_sol for n_sq (n_sol seed_sol) 100/seed_sol If ( 5 0) accept the solution accept accept 1 Seed_sq n_sq If (n_sol 5 best_sol) best_sol seed_sol n_sol Store n_sq as best_sq Freeze 0 2.3.6 If (40) Find Pacc e/T Generate u between 0 and 1 If u 5 Pacc, Accept the solution seed_sq n_sq seed_sol n_sol accept accept 1 2.3.7 Goto 2.3 2.4 Decrease the temperature T T r pacc accept/total If pacc 0.15, Freeze Freeze 1 goto step 2 Step 3:Return the best solution (sequence, MS, FT, IT and total) and Stop 3.2 Setting of parameters and preliminary testing of the algorithm The parameters for the proposed algorithm have been selected based on the preliminary study conducted using the values given in table 1. The above parameters have been selected based on the guidelines given in the past studies (Rajendran 1993, Sridhar and Rajendran 1993) and based on the results of preliminary study conducted. The final values for parameters are selected based on the experiments conducted and final values used are highlighted in bold. These include, initial temperature (To 10), final temperature (Tf 1), temperature reduction rate (r 95%), and number of iterations (itr) performed at each stage, which is set at itr 100 with acceptance probability of Pacc 0.15. Freeze count (FC) denotes the number of times the algorithm searches for a neighbor solution before reducing the temperature from current temperature and is set at FC 5. Further, the weights for makespan, flowtime and idletime are considered as equal (i.e. !1 !2 !3 1/3 and
Table 1. Sl No. 1 2 3 4 5 SA Parameters and levels. Level 1 10 1 95 50 5 Level 2 15 2 90 75 10 Level 3 20 5 85 100 15

2.3.2 2.3.3 2.3.4 2.3.5

Parameter Initial temperature (To) Final temperature (Tf) (% of To) Temperature reduction rate (r) (%) Number of iterations at each stage (itr) Acceptance probability (Pacc)

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!1 !2 !3 1). The same parameters have been used in solving all the problems listed in this study. The proposed algorithm has been executed using two different problems (three machines and five parts and 16 machines and 43 parts) selected from literature.

3.3 Numerical illustration The algorithm described in section 3.1 has been implemented using a small size problem with three machines and five parts (given in table 2). The step-wise implementation results are presented in table 3. The algorithm has been initialized with the parameters (given in table 1 in bold) and cell composition details (given in table 2). The initial solution is generated using the initial step described in the algorithm. The part sequence is derived based on the sequence of dispatching rules selected at random and the corresponding solution is denoted as (S1), the part sequence is 1-2-3-4-5 and corresponding value of MS/FT/IT/Total is 130/460/70/660. An intermediate solution is generated from the initial solution and is denoted as S2, the corresponding part sequence is 3-5-1-2-4 and associated objective value for MS/FT/IT/Total is 130/500/100/730. At this stage solution S1 and solution S2 are evaluated using relation e1 e2, where e1, e2 corresponds to solution S1 and S2, respectively. It is found that solution S1 is better and the same solution is retained. Another intermediate solution S3 with part
Table 2. Input data 3m/c 5 part problem. M1 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 20 0 40 10 10 M2 0 10 50 20 0 M3 30 30 0 0 10

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Source: Sridhar and Rajendran (1996).

Table 3. Step 1 2 3 4 5

Step-wise implementation of proposed algorithm. Description Part sequence 1-2-3-4-5 3-5-1-2-4 1-2-4-3-5 5-2-4-1-3 5-2-4-3-1 MS/FT/IT/Tot 130/460/70/660 130/500/100/730 120/390/60/570 130/320/60/510 110/330/70/510

Initial solution (S1) DR-sequence (d, c, d, e, i) Intermediate solution (S2) DR-sequence: b, a, e, g, i Intermediate solution (S3) DR-sequence: e, d, a, h, g Intermediate solution (S4) DR-sequence: a, c, d, e, f Final solution, solution (S5) DR-sequence: a, c, d, e, f

DR, dispatching rule.

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sequence 1-2-4-3-5 and MS/FT/IT/Total is 120/390/60/570 is obtained from S1 using dispatching rules sequence, which is generated randomly. The solution S3 is evaluated against, which current best solution the found that solution S3 is better and hence the current best solution is updated with S3. The similar steps were followed and solution (Part sequence: 5-2-4-1-3, MS/FT/IT/Total: 130/320/60/510) S4 was generated and evaluated and found to be better than the current best solution. The current best solution is updated with S4. After repeating the algorithm steps, another solution (Part sequence: 5-2-4-3-1, MS/FT/IT/Total: 110/330/70/510) S5 was generated and evaluated against the current best known solution S4 using relation (1), (2) and (3). The details of evaluation of solution S4 and S5 are given below: e4 0:333 130 110=110 0 0 0:0605 e5 0 0:333 10=320 0:333 10=60 0:0659 e4 e5 0.0054 5 0 and hence the solution (S4) MS/FT/IT: 130/320/60 is better than the solution (S5) MS/FT/IT: 110/330/70 though the sum of MS, FT and IT is the same for both the solutions. Finally the algorithm terminated after meeting the termination criteria with the final solution MS/FT/IT: 130/320/60 and the corresponding part sequence is 5-2-4-1-3. The final solution is given in table 4 and Gantt chart for the same is shown in figure 1. From figure 1, it can be seen that part P2 can be processed on machine M2 (since part P2 requires operations on machine M2 and M3 only) while part P5 is in progress on machine M1. This is due to consideration of the presence of missing operations in a cell. The solution obtained by the proposed algorithm (given in table 4) is evaluated
Table 4. Solution by proposed algorithm 1 (PR-sol 1). Completion time M1 P5 P2 P4 P1 P3 Idletime 10 0 20 40 80 0 M2 0 10 40 40 130 50 M3 20 50 40 80 80 10 Flowtime 20 50 40 80 130 320

MS/FT/IT (Total): 130/320/60 (510)

M3 Idle M2 M1 P2 P5 10

P5 Idle P4 20 30 P4 P1

P2

P1 Idle P3 P3

40

50

60 70 Time (Min)

80

90

100

110

120

130

Figure 1.

Gantt chart for solution given in table 4.

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with the solution (SR sol, given in table 5) reported in Sridhar and Rajendran (1996). Gantt charts for solutions given in tables 4, 5, and 6 are shown in figures 1, 2 and 3, respectively. The solutions given in table 5 (MS/FT/IT/Total: 110/430/60/600) and table 4 (MS/FT/IT/Total: 130/320/60/510) are evaluated using relation (1) and the details are given below.   430 320 0 0:1145 e4 0 0:33 320   130 110 0 0 0:0606 e5 0:33 110
Table 5. Sridhar and Rajendran (SR) solution. Completion time M1 P2 P3 P1 P4 P5 Idletime 0 40 60 70 80 0 M2 10 90 90 110 110 30 M3 40 40 90 90 100 30 Flowtime 40 90 90 110 100 430

MS/FT/IT (Total): 110/430/60 (600)

M3 Idle M2 M1 10 20 P2

P2 Idle P3 30 40

Idle P3 P1 50 P4

P1

P5 P4

P5 80 90 100 110

60 70 Time (Min)

Figure 2. Table 6.

Gantt chartSR solution given in table 5.

Alternate solution by proposed algorithm (PR-sol 2). Completion time M1 M2 0 10 40 110 110 30 M3 20 50 50 50 110 40 Flowtime 20 50 40 110 110 330

P5 P2 P4 P3 P1 Idletime

10 10 20 60 80 0

MS/FT/IT (Total): 110/330/70 (510)

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e4 e5 0.054040 and hence the proposed solution (e5) is better than SR solution (e4) for the objective of minimization of weighted sum of makespan, flowtime and idletime. Further, it is to be noted that there is marginal increase in makespan, no change in idletime and significant improvement in flowtime. An alternate solution is also shown in table 6 and the Gantt chart for the same is shown in figure 3. The algorithm has been implemented in Java environment. The summary of these solutions is given in table 7 and the performance of these solutions is also shown graphically in figure 4. From the above results it is to be noted that the proposed algorithm is capable of identifying better solutions. The computational time taken by the proposed algorithm is also noted and is around 0.60 seconds.
M3 Idle M2 M1 P2 P5 10 P5 Idle P4 20 30 40 P2 P4 P3 50 60 70 Idle P1 80 90 100 110 Idle P3 P1

Time (Min)

Figure 3.

Gantt ChartPR solution 2 given in table 6.

Table 7.

Summary of SR and PR Solutions for 3 m/c 5 part problem. MS FT 430 320 330 IT 60 60 70 Total 600 510 510 Part sequence 2-3-1-4-5 5-2-4-1-3 5-2-4-3-1

SR-Sol PR-Sol 1 PR-Sol 2

110 130 110

700 SR-Sol 600 500 Time 400 300 200 100 0 MS FT IT MS/FT/IT/TOT TOT PR-Sol 1 PR-Sol 2

Figure 4.

Comparison of SR and proposed solutions for 3 m/c 5 part problem.

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The performance of the proposed heuristic for large size problems is evaluated in the following section.

4. Performance evaluation of the proposed heuristic The performance of the proposed algorithm has been evaluated using 30 different data sets. In order to avoid the bias in generating the data sets, we have used the data sets from published literature and modified then suitably for experimentation. The data set for problem 1 in table 8 is a three machines and five parts problem and is taken from Sridhar and Rajendran (1996). The process time details for the problem are given in table 2. From the data given in table 2, an additional five data sets have been generated by randomly changing the position of process time elements without changing their values and number of zero entries. The resultant percent of missing operations (PMO) is noted as 33.33. These are listed in table 8 from problem 2 to 6. Another large size problem, 16 machine and 43 parts is adopted from Rao and Gu (1995) and the resultant PMO is noted as 81.69%. At the same level of PMO 81.69%, changing the position of process time elements has generated an additional five data sets. These are listed in table 8 from problem 25 to 30. Rajendran and Ziegler (2001) have observed that dispatching rules perform better when the percentage of missing operations is above 20%. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm at different levels of PMO, additional data sets (six data sets at each level of PMO) were generated using the 16 machines and 43 parts problem. The procedure followed in generating additional data sets is highlighted below. The additional data sets have been generated by replacing the randomly chosen zero entries with randomly chosen non-zero process time elements in the original data set and the process is repeated until the desired percentage of missing operations (PMO) is achieved. In the case of the 16 machines and 43 parts problem the original PMO is 81.69%; at the same PMO level five data sets have been generated by randomly changing the non-zero process time elements (i.e. the location of process time elements are different in these data sets). The data sets at PMO level of 75% are generated from the original data set (16 machines and 43 parts) with a PMO level of 81.69%. In the original data set, the non-zero process time elements were selected randomly and filled in the randomly selected zero process time elements until the desired PMO level was achieved. A similar procedure is repeated to generate six data sets at a PMO level of 50% and another six data sets at a PMO level of 25%. In total 24 data sets were generated using the 16 machines and 43 part problem covering four different levels of PMO. The similar procedure is followed in generating five additional data sets from three machine and five part problem with PMO level of 33.33%; in this case again the number of non-zero process time elements are kept constant and only positions of non-zero process time elements were changed. The proposed algorithm (PR-Alg 1) is evaluated by developing an alternate algorithm (PR-Alg 2). The alternate algorithm (PR-Alg 2) has been proposed using the same steps as that of PR-Alg1 with only three dispatching rules, (SPT, PT WINQ and 2PT WINQ NPT) described in Rajendran and Ziegler (2001), from the original pool of nine dispatching rules. The two algorithms are the same in all respects except for the number of dispatching rules used. The motivation for selecting the above three dispatching rules is that these rules have proved to be better

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442

Table 8. Proposed algorithm 1 (PR Sol-1) FT1 IT1 Tot1 CPU1 MS2 FT2 IT2 Tot2 CPU2 Proposed algorithm 2 (PR Sol-2)

Performance evaluation of proposed algorithm and alternate algorithm.

Sl No.

mn

PMO

MS1

Tot Imp (%)

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

35 35 35 35 35 35 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43

33.33 33.33 33.33 33.33 33.33 33.33 25.00 25.00 25.00 25.00 25.00 25.00 50.00 50.00 50.00 50.00 50.00 50.00 75.00 75.00 75.00 75.00 75.00 75.00 81.69 81.69 81.69 81.69 81.69 81.69

130.00 130.00 100.00 130.00 130.00 130.00 152.94 164.08 159.65 162.06 166.59 159.29 123.69 128.93 120.51 120.38 126.22 129.83 89.60 88.07 80.58 88.56 82.49 77.81 86.68 79.73 69.89 75.43 76.08 73.50

320.00 320.00 330.00 310.00 310.00 310.00 4095.76 4192.20 4183.04 4162.94 4095.91 4056.71 2972.69 2890.00 3033.96 3013.60 3017.06 2956.90 932.81 714.80 1665.98 1631.94 1473.17 1776.44 428.99 482.29 496.44 472.69 493.30 703.83

60.00 10.00 30.00 10.00 10.00 10.00 703.92 657.14 671.57 653.37 830.90 794.26 670.93 754.44 527.14 508.98 541.57 645.07 475.17 536.67 392.61 396.83 449.23 284.98 287.85 380.32 349.57 356.10 326.12 308.79

510.00 460.00 460.00 450.00 450.00 450.00 4952.62 5013.44 5014.26 4978.37 5093.40 5010.27 3767.31 3773.37 3681.61 3642.96 3684.85 3731.80 1497.58 1339.54 2139.17 2117.33 2004.89 2139.23 803.53 942.34 915.90 904.22 895.49 1086.12

0.79 0.75 0.71 0.71 0.71 0.79 7.61 7.73 7.86 7.73 5.88 7.78 7.77 7.71 8.07 8.25 6.25 6.06 8.47 8.78 6.34 6.68 7.01 6.95 7.52 7.95 7.35 9.90 10.10 9.95

130.00 130.00 100.00 130.00 130.00 130.00 157.24 173.75 164.97 168.94 161.79 160.39 130.00 130.37 133.56 137.61 133.38 143.36 92.98 93.66 107.11 102.28 92.34 77.13 80.39 81.21 77.10 87.16 77.80 78.06

320.00 320.00 330.00 310.00 310.00 310.00 4172.45 4315.23 4281.48 4327.92 4082.09 4280.77 3093.69 3076.92 3055.46 3139.56 3165.03 3167.59 1111.36 1082.81 1717.65 1744.89 1462.86 1814.46 720.48 628.87 524.96 506.82 495.30 780.29

60.00 10.00 30.00 10.00 10.00 10.00 696.58 746.22 638.14 753.69 851.14 828.64 704.00 694.14 560.77 591.75 591.70 756.99 611.29 592.69 697.21 658.57 604.69 323.20 362.50 297.47 336.40 453.17 326.30 412.40

510.00 460.00 460.00 450.00 450.00 450.00 5026.27 5235.20 5084.60 5250.55 5095.02 5269.80 3927.60 3901.46 3749.79 3868.92 3890.11 4067.93 1815.63 1769.16 2521.97 2505.74 2159.89 2214.79 1163.37 1007.55 938.46 1047.15 899.40 1270.76

0.72 0.79 0.82 0.79 0.80 0.78 5.91 6.50 6.90 5.90 6.50 6.05 6.10 6.09 6.25 6.15 6.00 6.17 6.32 8.08 6.03 6.32 6.75 9.29 7.21 7.21 7.35 9.90 9.10 7.21

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.47 4.24 1.38 5.18 0.03 4.92 4.08 3.28 1.82 5.84 5.28 8.26 17.52 24.28 15.18 15.50 7.18 3.41 30.93 6.47 2.40 13.65 0.43 14.53

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for the objective of minimization flowtime and makespan (see Rajendran and Ziegler 2001). The solutions obtained by these two algorithms are denoted as PR-Sol 1 and PR-Sol 2, respectively. Both the algorithms are executed with the same objective of minimization of weighted sum of makespan, flowtime and idletime and the results obtained for 30 data sets are given in table 8. From the results presented in table 8, it is to be noted that the performance of both the algorithms are same in the case of small size problems (three machine and five part, problems 1 to 6 in table 8), whereas in the case of large size problems (16 machines and 43 parts, problems 7 to 30 in table 8) the proposed algorithm (PR-Alg1) with nine dispatching rules outperformed the alternate algorithm (PR-Alg 2) with three dispatching rules across all the four performance measures (MS, FT, IT and Total). It is also observed that the CPU time for algorithm 1 is slightly higher than that of algorithm 2 and the average CPU time taken by PR-Alg 1 is higher by around 13% (i.e. the proposed algorithm 1 takes 13% more time than that of alternate algorithm 2). In table 8, Tot 1 is the sum of MS, FT and IT of solution obtained by PR-Alg 1 and similarly Tot 2 represents the same by PR-Alg2. The performance of both the algorithms is shown graphically in figure 5. From figure 5, it is to be noted that the performance of PR-Alg 1 is better than that
200 150 Makespan 100 50 0 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 Prob IT-1 IT-2 6000 5000 Tot. time 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 Prob 12 10 CPU Time 8 6 4 2 0 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 Prob CPU-1 CPU-2 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 Prob Flowtime MS-1 MS-2 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 Prob Tot-1 Tot-2 FT-1 FT-2

1000 800 Idle time 600 400 200 0

Figure 5. Performance of proposed algorithms (PR-Alg 1 and PR-Alg 2) for MS, FT, IT, total and CPU time.

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of PR-Alg 2. Further, the relative improvement in the performance of the proposed algorithm (PR-Alg 1) over the proposed alternate algorithm (PR-Alg 2) is better at higher levels of missing operations (50% to 75%). Table 9 and figure 6 show the relative improvement in performance of PR-Alg 1 over PR-Alg 2 for the 16 machines and 43 parts problem at four different levels of PMO. The performance improvement in PR-Alg 1 is around 3% at 25% PMO whereas the improvement is around 5% at 50% of PMO. The improvement is clearly distinct and is more than 13% at 75% level of PMO. However, the improvement starts declining marginally when PMO exceeds 75%. From these, it can be noted that the rate of improvement increases as PMO increases to a certain level and starts declining with a further increase in PMO. The reasons for this kind of decline are worth investigating further and it may depend on the problem size, structure and scheduling procedure used. In addition to the above, the performance of the proposed algorithm (PR-Alg 1) is evaluated using two benchmark algorithms NEH (Nawaz et al. 1983) and RC heuristic for minimization of makespan and minimization of flowtime, respectively. In the proposed algorithm, weights for different objectives have been modified suitably and results have been obtained. For the objective of makespan minimization, w1 is set as 1 and others to zero and similarly for flowtime minimization, w2 is set at 1 and others at zero. For makespan minimization, NEH heuristic has been used as the benchmark algorithm, whereas for total flowtime, the RC heuristic of Rajendran (1993) has been considered. These two algorithms have been coded in Matlab and executed for all the 30 data sets and the results obtained are given in Table 10.
Table 9. Performance of proposed algorithms (PR-Alg 1 and PR-Alg 2) for minimization of weighted sum of MS, FT and IT for 16 m/c 43 part problem at different levels of PMO. PMO 25.00 50.00 75.00 81.69 Tot-1 30 062.36 22 281.90 11 237.74 5547.60 Tot-2 30 961.44 23 405.81 12 987.18 6326.69 Imp (%) 2.90 4.80 13.47 12.31

16 14 Impv in tot (%) 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 25.00 50.00 75.00 PMO (%) 81.69 2.90 4.80 13.47 12.31

Figure 6. Performance of proposed algorithms (PR-Alg 1 and PR-Alg 2) for minimization of weighted sum of MS, FT and IT for 16 m/c 43 part problem at different levels of PMO.

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Table 10. Performance evaluation of proposed algorithm, NEH and RC heuristic for minimization of MS and FT. NEH Sol MS Diff (%) Avg diff FT CPU FT Diff (%) MS MS Proposed solution RC Sol FT FT Avg diff

Proposed solution CPU

Sl No.

mn

PMO

MS

5.34

6.35

1.53

6.09

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1.51

0.71

1.86

18.14

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 0.22

35 35 35 35 35 35 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43 16 43

33.33 33.33 33.33 33.33 33.33 33.33 25.00 25.00 25.00 25.00 25.00 25.00 50.00 50.00 50.00 50.00 50.00 50.00 75.00 75.00 75.00 75.00 75.00 75.00 81.69 81.69 81.69 81.69 81.69 81.69

110.00 130.00 100.00 130.00 130.00 130.00 150.33 159.13 157.08 154.76 154.20 128.35 111.15 110.53 105.24 107.37 107.02 105.41 75.10 75.25 75.00 72.50 75.50 75.25 67.61 67.61 67.61 67.61 67.61 67.61

0.59 0.65 0.81 0.61 0.62 0.68 7.60 8.65 9.50 16.8 7.73 12.50 9.45 10.24 9.75 11.32 10.35 9.87 10.21 6.39 8.61 6.75 9.52 9.25 9.70 10.5 11.8 12.5 9.56 9.30

130.00 130.00 120.00 130.00 130.00 130.00 143.06 149.06 157.40 154.54 154.63 131.39 111.20 111.65 108.84 107.44 107.55 109.94 75.25 75.25 79.16 76.17 76.16 75.25 67.61 67.61 68.53 67.61 67.61 67.61

15.38 0.00 16.67 0.00 0.00 0.00 5.08 6.76 0.20 0.14 0.28 2.31 0.04 1.00 3.31 0.07 0.49 4.12 0.20 0.00 5.26 4.82 0.87 0.00 0.00 0.00 1.34 0.00 0.00 0.00

320.00 320.00 350.00 310.00 310.00 310.00 3735.50 4091.23 4067.26 4082.30 4118.45 4193.23 2720.42 2851.32 2573.50 2600.45 2600.10 2723.25 1004.48 862.30 1694.04 1619.00 1503.17 1623.15 463.18 653.64 481.04 521.42 488.39 769.94

0.79 0.62 0.61 0.80 0.61 0.79 9.43 21.80 16.50 10.30 12.50 6.79 11.35 10.43 11.23 15.20 13.20 12.10 10.67 9.35 12.96 9.21 11.23 13.24 6.99 7.89 12.65 13.23 14.10 17.50

330.00 350.00 350.00 340.00 340.00 340.00 3733.70 3733.70 3791.40 3714.20 3936.00 3990.80 2726.20 2903.60 2583.80 2601.40 2600.40 2773.10 1673.20 1689.30 1722.40 1751.60 1679.80 1626.20 1181.11 1181.11 1176.81 1181.11 1181.11 1226.81

3.03 8.57 0.00 8.82 8.82 8.82 0.05 9.58 7.28 9.91 4.64 5.07 0.21 1.80 0.40 0.04 0.01 1.80 39.97 48.96 1.65 7.57 10.51 0.19 60.78 44.66 59.12 55.85 58.65 37.24

52.72 445

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In the case of small size problems (three machines and five parts) the proposed algorithm (PR-Alg 1) and NEH heuristic identified the same solution in four out of six instances and in two cases the improvement in makespan is more than 15%, with an average improvement of 5.34%. In the case of large size problems the proposed algorithm failed to identify a better solution at 25% missing operations (PMO) and resulted in better solutions as PMO increases from 25%. It is observed that the proposed algorithm identified solutions with an average improvement of 1.51%, 1.86% and 0.22% at PMO level 50%, 75% and 81.69%, respectively. From this it can be observed that the performance depends on degree of PMO, which is in agreement with the observation of Rajendran and Ziegler (2001). Future studies can focus on this issue and explore the acceptable level of PMO for using dispatching rules. For minimization of the flowtime objective the proposed algorithm (PR-Alg 1) has been executed by setting appropriate weights (w2 1 and w1 0, w3 0) and the results obtained are given in table 10 and compared with the RC heuristic (Rajendran 1993). In the case of small size problems, the performance of the proposed algorithm is better and the average improvement in flowtime is more than 6%. Whereas in the case of large size problems (16 machines and 43 parts), the proposed algorithm failed to identify better solutions at a 25% level of PMO. However, the performance is significantly better and the average improvement in flowtime is around 18% and more than 50% at PMO level 75% and 81.69%, respectively. Figure 7 shows the performance of the proposed algorithm and NEH heuristic for MS minimization and RC heuristic for flowtime minimization in respect of both small and large size problems. From these results, it can be concluded that the proposed algorithm performs better at 50% and 75% level of PMO for makespan minimization, declining when PMO is more than 75%. A similar trend is observed for flowtime minimization as well and there is no decline observed when PMO exceeds 75%. This aspect may be worth investigating further in future studies.

5. Conclusions and future work This study addresses the scheduling in CMS with varying degrees of percentage of missing operations for minimization of weighted sum of makespan, flowtime and idletime. The problem is addressed by developing simulated annealing (SA)-based algorithms. The algorithms make use of nine popularly used dispatching rules for scheduling of jobs/parts in flowline-based CMS with varying degrees of missing operations. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated using 30 data sets of varying degrees of percentage of missing operations (PMO). The data sets are generated from two different problems (three machines and five parts, 16 machines and 43 parts) selected from literature. It is found that the proposed algorithm with a larger pool of dispatching rule out-performed an alternate algorithm with three dispatching rules as well as NEH and RC heuristics for the selected problems. Based on the experiments conducted, it can be concluded that the proposed algorithm could be used as a better choice when the extent of missing operations is large. The dispatching rules are more useful when the percentage of missing operations is more than 50%. This observation is also in agreement with that of Rajendran and Ziegler (2001).

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170 150 130 Makespan 110 90

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70 50 1 4500 4000 3500 3000 Flowtime 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 21 23 25 27 29 Prob # 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 21 23 25 27 29 Prob # FT-Pr FT-RC

Figure 7. Performance of proposed algorithm (PR-Alg 1) and benchmark algorithms (NEH and RC) for minimization of Makespan (MS) and Flowtime (FT) objective.

This study has potential to be extended by considering the layout of cells and sequencing of part families in the cells where more than one part family is processed. The proposed algorithm can be extended to schedule parts and families in a hybrid flowshop environment. Further, the extent of missing operations for which dispatching rules are more applicable could be explored. Meta heuristics can be developed and evaluated with standard results from the literature.

Acknowledgements The author thanks the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, which helped to improve the quality of the paper. The author sincerely acknowledges Professor B. Mahadevan, Professor Rohit Bhatnagar and Professor C. Rajendran

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for their valuable comments. The author acknowledges the financial support from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India, New Delhi.

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