Cell Loading and Family Scheduling for Jobs with Individual Due Dates

In this chapter, cell loading and family scheduling in a cellular manufacturing environment is studied. What separates this study from others is the presence of individual due dates for every job in a family. The performance measure is to minimize the number of tardy jobs. Family splitting among cells is allowed but job splitting is not. Even though family splitting increases number of setups, it increases the possibility of meeting individual job due dates. Two methods are employed in order to solve this problem, namely Mathematical Modeling and Genetic Algorithms. The results showed that Genetic Algorithm found the optimal solution for all problems tested. Furthermore, GA is efficient compared to the Mathematical Modeling especially for larger problems in terms of execution times. The results of experimentation showed that family splitting was observed in all multi-cell solutions, and therefore, it can be concluded that family splitting is a good strategy.