Scheduling Tool for Flexible Manufacturing Systems using Hybrid Genetic Algorithm

A hybrid scheduling tool (HST) which produces schedule for N numbers of parts to be processed on four machining centres (MC) with flexible routings is proposed. In the HST, genetic algorithm (GA) is combined with a heuristic for decoding the semi active schedule (chromosome) into an active schedule. A novel problem encoding (chromosome representation) method is implemented in the GA and the GA operators have been adapted to the problem. The tool has performed well for 4/4/Cmax job shop scheduling (JSS) bench mark problem and further work is recommended to extend the methodology to M number of machines and N number of parts and test its performance against other JSS bench mark problems. More cross over and mutation procedures need to be implemented in the tool for improvement of its convergence performance