Genetic Algorithm Based Nesting Method with Considering Schedule for Sheet Metal Processing

Abstract

In recent years, efficient and agile manufacturing is aimed at in many manufacturing industries. In sheet metal processing, reducing the waste of raw materials and managing the suitable production schedule are the important factors for such manufacturing. Nesting is executed to determine the optimal layout for raw material. And scheduling is executed to determine the suitable schedule. Generally, nesting and scheduling are executed separately because their optimization objectives are different. However there occurs a certain trade-off between nesting and scheduling. Therefore, those problems should be considered simultaneously in order to increase the efficiency of entire manufacturing activity. Under such understanding, in this study, we propose an nesting method with considering schedule. In this method, we apply Genetic Algorithm to solve the nesting problem. We propose a new fitness function which considers both reduction of waste material and minimizing total tardiness. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of the proposed method through some computational experiments.