A comprehensive quadratic assignment problem for an integrated layout design of final assembly line and manufacturing feeder cells

• Main Authors: Masoud Rabbani, Saeed Elahi, Babak Javadi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Growing Science 2017-04-01
• Series: Decision Science Letters
• Subjects: Cellular manufacturing system; assembly line design; Quadratic assignment problem; Feeder cells; Genetic algorithm; Memetic algorithm
• Online Access: http://www.growingscience.com/dsl/Vol6/dsl_2016_27.pdf

Assembly lines and cellular manufacturing systems (CMSs) design have been widely used in the literature. However the integration of these manufacturing concepts is neglected in an environment where parts need to be assembled after production in different shops. In this paper, a comprehensive quadratic assignment problem is developed for the assignment of machines of each part manufacturing cell, sub-assembly tasks of each sub-assembly cell as well as the assignment of different cells and final assembly tasks within the shop floor in their relevant predetermined locations. A genetic algorithm (GA) as well as a memetic algorithm (MA) consisting of the proposed GA and Tabu search (TS) algorithm are proposed and implemented on different size numerical examples. The obtained results show the efficiency of both algorithms to reach near optimal solutions compared to the optimal solution of small-sized problems.