Scheduling Problem of Virtual Cellular Manufacturing Systems (VCMS); Using Simulated Annealing and Genetic Algorithm based Heuristics

In this paper, we present a simulated annealing (SA) and a genetic algorithm (GA) based on heuristics for scheduling problem of jobs in virtual cellular manufacturing systems. A virtual manufacturing cell (VMC) is a group of resources that is dedicated to the manufacturing of a part family. Although this grouping is not reflected in the physical structure of the manufacturing system, but machines are spread on the shop floor physically. In this paper, there are multiple jobs with different manufacturing processing routes. First, we develop the mathematical model for the problem, and then we present the suggested algorithms. The scheduling objective is weighed tardiness and total travelling distance minimization. The problem is divided into two branches: small scale and large scale. For small scale, the results of GA and SA are compared to GAMS. For large scale problems, due to the time limitation of 3600 seconds, the results of GA and SA are compared to each other. Computational results show that both SA ad GA algorithms perform properly but SA is likely to turn out well in finding better solutions in shorter times especially in large scale problems.