A comprehensive study of Scheduling for cellular manufacturing system using Tabu Search Method

The main contribution of this work is to apply tabu search based algorithms for solution of scheduling of jobs in CMS environment. An attempt has been made in this work to vary the job sequencing so that optimal sequencing of jobs can be achieved. The idea behind this work is to perturb sequences in the search of better results. More the number of sequences higher will be the degree of the optimization of objective (COF). This algorithm is suitable to explore number of job sequences from a fixed job sequence and its ability to come out from local optima. The main objective, which is the combination of maximizing the machine utilization by keeping penalty cost nil is achieved by this method. A scheduling procedure is developed for a specific FMS to maintain its flexibility and thereby the intended performance measures. The mechanism operates based on tabu search and optimizes two contradicting objectives simultaneously. The problem in this research is considered as each processing step of job has a processing time with specific operation. Set up times of machines and intercellular movement times can be considered while solving the scheduling problem in future.