Solving the combined modular product scheduling and production cell reconfiguration problem: a GA approach with parallel chromosome coding

A genetic algorithm (GA) with parallel chromosome coding scheme is proposed to solve the integrated modular product scheduling and manufacturing cell configuration problem in reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMSs). In the proposed GA, each chromosome contains two parallel sets of genes. The first set of genes represents job sequences and the second stands for cell configurations. The job sequence dependent work-in-process (WIP) cost and cell configuration dependent manufacturing cost are minimized to enhance the performance of a RMS. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated by comparing the computational results with that achieved using LINGO and by applying it to both small size and large size problems.