Heuristic Approach for a Combined Transfer Line Balancing and Buffer Allocation Problem Considering Uncertain Demand

Abstract

In this paper, we refer to a real case study of an industrial partner recently committed to its project on the design of a multi-unit and multi-product manufacturing system. Although the considered problem refers to an actual complex manufacturing system, it can be theoretically classified as a union of two key problems that need to be solved during the transfer line design stage: the transfer line balancing problem (TLBP) and the buffer allocation problem (BAP). As two closely related problems, TLBP and BAP usually have similar optimizing directions and share the same purpose: finding a balance between the performance of the transfer line system as well as minimizing investment costs. These problems are usually solved sequentially, but this leads to solutions close to a local optimum in the solution space and not to the global optimum of the overall problem. This paper presents a multi-objective optimization for concurrently solving transfer line balancing and buffer allocation problems. The new approach is based on a combination of evolutionary and heuristic-based algorithms and takes into account the uncertainty of market demand. To validate the proposed approach, an industrial case study in a multi-unit manufacturing system producing multiple products (four engine blocks) is discussed.

Optimization of the OEE indicator through meta-models’ simulation in the buffer allocation problem

“…The most common optimization criteria consider maximizing the average throughput rate (Gao, 2022;Gao, Higashi, Kobayashi, Taneda, Rubrico & Ota, 2020;Gao & Liu, 2023;Kassoul, Cheikhrouhou & Zufferey, 2023;Köse, Demir, Tunal & Eliiyi, 2015;Kose & Kilincci, 2015;Koyuncuoğlu & Demir, 2021;Lin & Chiu, 2018;Nahas, Nourelfath & Gendreau, 2014;Narasimhamu, Reddy & Rao, 2014;Patchong & Kerbache, 2017;Wang, Song, Shin & Moon, 2014), minimizing the total buffer size (Li, 2013;Weiss & Stolletz, 2015), minimizing the total cost of allocation (Magnanini, Terkaj & Tolio, 2022;Nahas, 2017;Nahas & Nourelfath, 2018;Ouzineb, Mhada, Pellerin & El Hallaoui, 2018;Tiacci, 2022), among others (Alfieri, Matta & Pastore, 2020;Hernández-Vázquez, Hernández-González, Jiménez-García, Hernández-Ripalda & Hernández-Vázquez, 2019;Hernández-Vázquez, Hernández-González, Hernández-Vázquez, Figueroa-Fernández & Cancino de la Fuente, 2022b;Koyuncuoğlu & Demir, 2023;Shaaban & Romero-Silva, 2021;Shao, Moroni, Li, & Xu, 2022;Xi, Smith, Chen, Mao, Zhang & Yu, 2021;Zhou, Liu, Yu & Tao, 2018).…”