Metaheuristics for a Flexible Assembly System Design Problem

  • Authors:

  • Sheldon H. Jacobson;Alan W. Johnson;Kelly A. Sullivan;Mark A. Fleischer;Ashok Kumar

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0118. E-mail: jacobson@vt.edu;Graduate School of Systems and Logistics, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, OH 45433-7765. E-mail: ajohnson@afit.af.mil;Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0118. E-mail: sullivan@tioli.ise.vt.edu;Department of Engineering Management, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529-0248. E-mail: mafl00f@engr.enma.odu.edu;Seidman School of Business, 510 Eberhard Center, Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, MI 49504. E-mail: kumara@gvsu.edu

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Heuristics
  • Year:
  • 1997

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Abstract

Flexibility has become an important priority in the formulation andimplementation of manufacturing strategies. This in turn has openedup a new class of design problems for such systems. Flexible assemblysystems (FAS), consisting of a variety of processors and operations,provide the opportunity for improving product manufacturingflexibility, hence gaining competitive advantages. This paperconsiders a particular design decision problem for FAS. Amatrix-based, polynomial-time lower bound algorithm ispresented. Simulated annealing and tabu search metaheuristics areformulated to address the problems. Computational experience withthese metaheuristics is reported.