A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal

Job scheduling and management of wearing tools with stochastic tool lifetimes




AuthorsHirvikorpi M, Knuutila T, Leipala T, Nevalainen OS

PublisherSPRINGER

Publication year2007

Journal:International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems

Journal name in sourceINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

Journal acronymINT J FLEX MANUF SYS

Volume19

Issue4

First page 443

Last page462

Number of pages20

ISSN0920-6299

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1007/s10696-008-9043-y


Abstract
The problem of scheduling jobs using wearing tools is studied. Tool wearing is assumed to be stochastic and the jobs are processed in one machining centre provided with a limited capacity tool magazine. The aim is to minimize the expected average completion time of the jobs by choosing their processing order and tool management decisions wisely. All jobs are available at the beginning of the planning period. This kind of situation is met in production planning of CNC-machines. Previous studies concerning this problem have either assumed deterministic wearing for the tools or omitted the wearing completely. In our formulation of the problem, tool wearing is stochastic and the problem becomes very hard to solve analytically. A heuristic based on genetic algorithms is therefore given for the joint problem of job scheduling and tool management. The algorithm searches the most beneficial job sequence when the tool management decisions are made by a removal rule taking into account the future planned usage of the tools. The cost of each job sequence is evaluated by simulating the job processing. Empirical tests with heuristics indicate that by taking the stochastic information into account, one can reduce the average job processing time considerably.



Last updated on 2025-14-10 at 10:06