LOOP LAYOUT DESIGN PROBLEM IN FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS USING GENETIC ALGORITHMS

A common layout for flexible manufacturing systems is a loop network w ith machines arranged in a cycle and materials transported in only one direction around the cycle. Traffic congestion is usually used as the measure for evaluating a loop layout, which is defined as the number of times a part traverses the loop before its processing is completed. This paper investigates the problem of designing a loop layout system with genetic algorithms. The essence of the problem is how to determi ne the order of machines around the loop subject to a set of part-rout e constraints so as to optimize some measures. A hybrid approach of ge netic algorithms and neighborhood search is developed for solving the problem. The proposed method is tested on hypothetical problems. Compu tational results demonstrate that genetic algorithms can be a promisin g approach for loop layout design in flexible manufacturing systems. T wo typical measures, the minsum and minmax congestion measures, are ex amined and computational experiments show that the minsum approach out performs the minmax approach. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science L td. All rights reserved.