Two-stage algorithm for routing and scheduling flexible manufacturing cells

Scheduling of resources and tasks has been, a key focus of manufacturing-related problems for many years. The research presented here focuses on production routing and scheduling of jobs within a flexible manufacturing cell. The major objective is to develop a two-stage heuristic methodology that minimizes the manufacturing makespan. For the routing phase (Stage I), a modified earliest completion time heuristic is utilized to construct initial feasible sequences. Then, during the sequencing phase (Stage II), a common heuristic is used to determine the makespan value. An illustrative example is given to show that the proposed heuristic methodology is effective in acquiring good solutions for small-to-medium size multi-machine FMC problems.