Evolutionary Algorithm for Process Plan Selection with Multiple Objectives

This paper presents a process plan selection model with multiple objectives. The process plans for all parts should be selected under multiple objective environment as follows: (1) minimizing the sum of machine processing and material handling time of all the parts considering realistic shop factors such as production volume, processing time, machine capacity, and capacity of transfer device. (2) balancing the load between machines. A multiple objective mathematical model is proposed and an evolutionary algorithm with the adaptive recombination strategy is developed to solve the model. To illustrate the efficiency of proposed approach, numerical examples are presented. The proposed approach is found to be effective in offering a set of satisfactory Pareto solutions within a satisfactory CPU time in a multiple objective environment.