Simultaneous Scheduling of Machines and Tools to Minimise Makespan in Multi Machine FMS Using New Nature Inspired Algorithms

This article addresses simultaneous scheduling of machines and tools to generate best optimal sequences that minimize makespan in a multi-machine Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS). Performance of FMS is expected to improve by effective utilization of its resources, by proper integration and synchronization of their scheduling. Three heuristics, Symbiotic Organisms Search (SOS) algorithm, Crow search algorithm(CSA) and Flower pollination algorithm(FPA), have been proposed for solving joint machine and tool scheduling problems neglecting tool transfer times between machines with makespan as objective. The proposed heuristics are tested on various problems with makespan as objective and the results are compared with the results of existing methods. The results show that all the proposed heuristics are outperformed the existing methods and among the proposed heuristics FPA is outperformed.