A tabu search approach for buffer allocation in production lines with unreliable machines


Demir L., TUNALI S., Lokketangen A.

ENGINEERING OPTIMIZATION, cilt.43, sa.2, ss.213-231, 2011 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 43 Sayı: 2
  • Basım Tarihi: 2011
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1080/0305215x.2010.481022
  • Dergi Adı: ENGINEERING OPTIMIZATION
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.213-231
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: buffer allocation, production lines, tabu search, combinatorial optimization, SERIAL PRODUCTION LINES, HEURISTIC ALGORITHM, STORAGE SPACE, CAPACITY, DESIGN, OPTIMIZATION, SYSTEMS
  • Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

The optimal allocation of buffers is an important research issue in designing production lines. In this study, a tabu search (TS) algorithm is proposed to find near-optimal buffer allocation plans for a serial production line with unreliable machines. The main objective is to maximize the production rate, i.e. throughput, of the line. The efficiency of the proposed method is also tested to solve buffer allocation problems with the objective of total buffer size minimization. To estimate the throughput of the line with a given specific buffer allocation, an analytical decomposition approximation method is used. The performance of the tabu search algorithm is demonstrated on existing benchmark problems. The results obtained by the TS algorithm are clearly encouraging, as the TS algorithm is much better than the other algorithms for all considered benchmark problems.