The problem of simultaneous scheduling of machines and vehicles in flexible manufacturing system (FMS) was addressed. A spreadsheet based genetic algorithm (GA) approach was presented to solve the problem. A domain independent general purpose GA was used, which was an add-in to the spreadsheet software. An adaptation of the propritary GA software was demonstrated to the problem of minimizing the total completion time or makespan for simultaneous scheduling of machines and vehicles in flexible manufacturing systems. Computational results are presented for a benchmark with 82 test problems, which have been constructed by other researchers. The achieved results are comparable to the previous approaches. The proposed approach can be also applied to other problems or objective functions without changing the GA routine or the spreadsheet model.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.