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Scheduling multiple servers to facilitate just-in-time part-supply in automobile assembly lines

Tao Peng (School of Mechanical Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China)
Binghai Zhou (School of Mechanical Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China)

Assembly Automation

ISSN: 0144-5154

Article publication date: 6 August 2018

681

Abstract

Purpose

With regard to product variety and cost competition, just-in-time (JIT) part-supply has become a critical issue in automobile assembly lines (AALs). This paper aims to investigate a multiple server scheduling problem (MSSP) encountered in the JIT part-supply process of AALs. Parts are stored in boxes and allotted from the JIT-supermarket to consumptive stations with a multiple server system. The schedule is to dispatch and sequence material boxes on each server for minimizing line-side inventory levels.

Design/methodology/approach

A mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model is established to formulate the proposed MSSP to pave the way for CPLEX procedure. Considering the high complexity of MSSP, a hybrid ant colony optimization (HACO) approach is developed by integrating basic ant colony optimization (ACO) with local optimizers that comprise of a fast local search and a tailored breadth-first tree search method.

Findings

Both CPLEX and HACO approach are capable of solving small-scale instances to optimality within reasonable computation time. The proposed HACO has been well enhanced with the embedded fast local search and tailored breadth-first tree search, and it performs robustly in a statistically significant manner when applied to real-world scale instances.

Originality/value

No stock-outs constraints and weighted line-side inventory level are considered in this paper, and the MSSP is solved satisfactorily to facilitate an efficient JIT part-supply of the AAL. In terms of the algorithm design, a tree search-based local optimizer is embedded into ACO to combine the mechanisms of ACO and problem-specific optimization.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71471135).

Citation

Peng, T. and Zhou, B. (2018), "Scheduling multiple servers to facilitate just-in-time part-supply in automobile assembly lines", Assembly Automation, Vol. 38 No. 3, pp. 347-360. https://doi.org/10.1108/AA-08-2017-102

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited

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