A Metaheuristic Algorithm for Solving Simultaneous Scheduling Problems

In facing the challenges evolving in the day to day global competition, Flexible manufacturing systems has become the right choice for the manufacturers. But efficient scheduling is needed for its successful implementation. In its scheduling not only sequencing of jobs on machines but also the routing of the jobs through the system is important. Not only scheduling of machines but also others resources available in the system like Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) and Automated Storage/Retrieval System (AS/RS) must also be considered during this process. In the present work a procedure for simultaneous scheduling of machines and AGVs is used and this procedure is integrated with differential evolution metaheuristic for scheduling both the machines and AGVs simultaneously in order to minimize the makespan. The performance of the proposed metaheuristic is evaluated by considering 82 benchmark problems consisting of different job sets and layout configurations. Finally the obtained makespans are compared with the previously proposed algorithms available in the literature.