An adaptive tabu search approach for buffer allocation problem in unreliable non-homogenous production lines

  • Authors:

  • Leyla Demir;Semra Tunalı;Deniz Türsel Eliiyi

  • Affiliations:

  • Dokuz Eylul University, Department of Industrial Engineering, Tinaztepe Campus, Buca-Izmir 35160, Turkey;Izmir University of Economics, Department of Business Administration, Sakarya Cad. No: 156, Balçova-Izmir, Turkey;Izmir University of Economics, Department of Industrial Systems Engineering, Sakarya Cad. No: 156, Balçova-Izmir, Turkey

  • Venue:
  • Computers and Operations Research
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

The buffer allocation problem, i.e. how much buffer storage to allow and where to place it within the line, is an important research issue in designing production lines. In this study, a novel adaptive tabu search approach is proposed for solving buffer allocation problem in unreliable and non-homogeneous production lines. The objective is to maximize the throughput of the line, which is constrained by the capacity of each buffer space and also the total buffer capacity to allocate to these spaces. Besides proposing a new strategy to tune the parameters of tabu search adaptively during the search, an experimental study is carried out to select an intelligent initial solution scheme among three alternatives so as to decrease the search effort to obtain the best solutions. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated by computational tests and very promising results are obtained.