Please welcome Dr. Lars Monch to the ISE Department. Dr. Monch serves as a professor at the University of Hagen and will discuss decomposition heuristics for cost and tardiness reduction in mixed-model aircraft manufacturing flow lines.
As always refreshments are available in 428 Daniels Hall 30 minutes before the seminar begins.
A manufacturing system consisting of two subsystems is considered in low-volume manufacturing as found in aircraft manufacturing. The first subsystem consists of parallel mixed-model assembly lines whereas the second one is formed by parallel stations. A finite buffer is between the two subsystems. A combined objective function is used that accounts for total labor and inventory cost at the first subsystem and for makespan and total weighted tardiness (TWT) at the second subsystem, respectively. In a first step, the jobs, i.e. airplanes, have to be assigned to one of the parallel assembly lines. Moreover, they must be sequenced at each single assembly line. Workers have to be assigned to each job and station. Assignment and sequencing decisions have to be made for the jobs at the second subsystem to allow for computing the makespan and the TWT value. A random-key genetic algorithm (RKGA) is used to assign jobs to the assembly lines and to sequence them. The RKGA is hybridized with heuristics and exact approaches to determine start and completion times of the jobs at the stations. Decisions related to the second subsystem are made by list scheduling. Outsourcing is required to take into account the finite buffer between the two subsystems. Results of computational experiments based on randomly generated problem instances demonstrate that the proposed decomposition heuristics perform well with respect to solution quality and computing time.
LARS MÖNCH is a Professor for Enterprise-wide Software Systems in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at University of Hagen. He received a master’s degree in Mathematics with a minor in Computer Science, a Ph.D. in the same subject from the University of Göttingen, and a habilitation degree in Information Systems from the Technical University of Ilmenau. He worked two years for Softlab GmbH, Munich in the area of software development. His current research interests are in information systems for manufacturing and logistics, production planning and control for complex manufacturing systems, especially semiconductor wafer fabrication facilities, scheduling, and artificial intelligence applications in manufacturing and logistics. He serves as an Associated Editor of the European Journal of Industrial Engineering, Business & Information Systems Engineering Journal, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, and IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing. His research was funded by companies like Infineon Technologies AG, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, X-FAB Semiconductor Foundries AG, Airbus, the German Government, and the European Commission.
