An Optimization Tool for Process Planning and Scheduling

Abstract

Process planning and scheduling are one of the most important functions to support flexible planning in a manufacture. The planning and scheduling should be solved simultaneously and not sequential for productivity improvements in manufacturing. In this paper, we propose an optimization tool based on genetic algorithm (GA) approach to help person in charge of process planning and scheduling to find the most promising sequence of operations considering a choice of machines on which to perform the operations. Minimizing makespan is the evaluation criteria. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2014.