Some experimental results relevant to the optimization of configuration and planning problems

Abstract

This communication deals with mass customization and the association of the product configuration task with the planning of its production process while trying to minimize cost and cycle time. We consider a two steps approach that first permit to interactively (with the customer) achieve a first product configuration and first process plan (thanks to non-negotiable requirements) and then optimize both of them (with remaining negotiable requirements). This communication concerns the second optimization step. Our goal is to evaluate a recent evolutionary algorithm (EA). As both problems are considered as constraints satisfaction problems, the optimization problem is constrained. Therefore the considered EA was selected and adapted to fit the problem. The experimentations will compare the EA with a conventional branch and bound according to the problem size and the density of constraints. The hypervolume metric is used for comparison. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.