Operation allocation in automated manufacturing system using GA-based approach with multifidelity models

The scheduling problem in manufacturing is considered as among the toughest to solve. The basic drawback of many proposed methods has been the huge amount of computation time for simulation. This paper proposes a framework to solve the operation allocation problem in automated manufacturing systems using the concept of multifidelity. The concept of multifidelity has been proposed by several researchers in order to reduce the computation time for simulation. In this paper, a GA-based heuristic procedure will be developed along with the multifidelity approach to solve a typical manufacturing scheduling problem. Four different fidelity models have been defined on which experimentation is carried out. The proposed method has been tested on a sample dataset and the results have been analysed to choose the fidelity model which best describes the scenario. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.