Iterative algorithms for part grouping and loading in cellular reconfigurable manufacturing systems

Abstract

A reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS), one of state-of-the-art manufacturing system technologies, is the one designed at the outset for rapid changes in its hardware and software components in order to quickly adjust its production capacity and functionality in response to market or system changes. In this study, we consider a cellular RMS with multiple reconfigurable machining cells (RMCs), each of which has numerical control machines, a setup station, and an automatic material handling and storage system. Each machine within the RMC has an automatic tool changer and a tool magazine of a limited capacity. Two important operational problems, part grouping and loading, are considered in this study. Part grouping is the problem of allocating parts to RMCs, and loading is the problem of allocating operations and their cutting tools to machines within the RMC. An integer programming model is suggested to represent the two problems at the same time for the objective of balancing the workloads assigned to machines. Then, due to the complexity of the problem, we suggest two iterative algorithms in which the two problems are solved repeatedly until a solution is obtained. Computational experiments were done on various test instances and the results are reported.

Keywords:

• cellular reconfigurable manufacturing systems
• part grouping
• loading
• iterative algorithms

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Ministry of Knowledge Economy grant funded by Korea government (Grant Code: 10033895-2009-11). This is gratefully acknowledged. Also, this paper is a detailed and extended version of Kim et al (2010) presented at the APIEMS conference.