Measurement technology plays an important role in discrete manufacturing industry. Probe-type coordinate measuring machines (CMMs) are normally used to capture the geometry of part features. The measured points are then fit to verify a specified geometry by using the least squares method (LSQ). However, it occasionally overestimates the tolerance zone, which leads to the rejection of some good parts. To overcome this drawback, minimum zone approaches defined by the ANSI Y14.5M-1994 standard have been extensively pursued for zone fitting in coordinate form literature for such basic features as plane, circle, cylinder and sphere. Meanwhile, complex features such as torus have been left to be dealt-with by the use of profile tolerance definition. This may be impractical when accuracy of the whole profile is desired. Hence, the true deviation model of torus is developed and then formulated as a minimax problem. Next, a relatively new and simple population based evolutionary approach, particle swarm optimization (PSO), is applied by imitating the social behavior of animals to find the minimum tolerance zone torusity. Simulated data with specified torusity zones are used to validate the deviation model. The torusity results are in close agreement with the actual torusity zones and also confirm the effectiveness of the proposed PSO when compared to those of the LSQ.

This paper present a new optimization model to generate aggregate production planning by considering electric cost. The new Time Of Switching (TOS) electric type is introduced by switching over Time Of Day (TOD) and Time Of Use (TOU) electric types to minimize the electric cost. The fuzzy demand and Dynamic inventory tracking with multiple plant capacity are modeled to cover the uncertain demand of customer. The constraint for minimum hour limitation of plant running per one start up event is introduced to minimize plants idle time. Furthermore; the Optimal Weight Moving Average Factor for customer demand forecasting is introduced by monthly factors to reduce forecasting error. Application is illustrated for multiple cement mill plants. The mathematical model was formulated in spreadsheet format. Then the spreadsheet-solver technique was used as a tool to solve the model. A simulation running on part of the system in a test for six months shows the optimal solution could save 60% of the actual cost.

The most difficult and time-intensive issue in the successful implementation of genetic algorithms is to find good parameter setting, one of the most popular subjects of current research in genetic algorithms. In this study, we present a new efficient experimental design method for parameter optimization in a genetic algorithm for general job shop scheduling problem using the Taguchi method. Four genetic parameters including the population size, the crossover rate, the mutation rate, and the stopping condition are treated as design factors. For the performance characteristic, makespan is adopted. The number of jobs, the number of operations required to be processed in each job, and the number of machines are considered as noise factors in generating various job shop environments. A robust design experiment with inner and outer orthogonal arrays is conducted by computer simulation, and the optimal parameter setting is presented which consists of a combination of the level of each design factor. The validity of the optimal parameter setting is investigated by comparing its SN ratios with those obtained by an experiment with full factorial designs.

An automated guided vehicle (AGV) system is a group of collaborating unmanned vehicles which is commonly used for transporting materials within manufacturing, warehousing, or distribution systems. The performance of an AGV system depends on the dispatching rules used to assign vehicles to pickup requests, the vehicle routing protocols, and the home location of idle vehicles, which are called dwell points. In manufacturing and distribution environments which emphasize just-in-time principles, performance measures for material handling are based on response times for pickup requests and equipment utilization. In an AGV system, the response time for a pickup request is the time that it takes for the vehicle to travel from its dwell point to the pickup station. In this article, an exact dynamic programming algorithm for selecting dwell points in a tandem-loop multiple-vehicle AGV system is presented. The objective of the model is to minimize the maximum response time for all pickup requests in a given shift. The recursive algorithm considers time restrictions on the availability of vehicles during the shift.

The selection of suppliers and the determination of order quantities to be placed with those suppliers are important decisions in a supply chain. In this research, a non-linear mixed integer programming model is presented to select suppliers and determine the order quantities. The model considers the purchasing cost which takes into account quantity discount, the cost of transportation, the fixed cost for establishing suppliers, the cost for holding inventory, and the cost of receiving poor quality parts. The capacity constraints for suppliers, quality and lead-time requirements for the parts are also taken into account in the model. Since the purchasing cost, which is a decreasing step function of order quantities, introduces discontinuities to the non-linear objective function, it is not easy to employ traditional optimization methods. Thus, a heuristic algorithm, called particle swarm optimization (PSO), is used to find the (near) optimal solution. However, PSO usually generates initial solutions randomly. To improve the PSO solution quality, a heuristic procedure is proposed to find an initial solution based on the average unit cost including transportation, purchasing, inventory, and poor quality part cost. The results show that PSO with the proposed initial solution heuristic provides better solutions than those with PSO algorithm only.

This paper discusses two algorithms for recommending notebook computer (NBC) and workstation adjustments so that the user can assume an ergonomic seated posture during NBC operation. Required input data are the user's anthropometric data and physical dimensions of the NBC and the workstation. The first algorithm is based on an assumption that there are no workstation constraints while the second algorithm considers the actual seat height and work surface height. The results from the algorithms include recommendations for adjusting the NBC (tilt angle of the NBC base unit, angle between the base and screen units, and base support height) and the workstation (heights of seat support and footrest, and distance between the body and the NBC).