Applying an Electromagnetism-Like Algorithm for Solving the Manufacturing Cell Design Problem

2018 ◽  
pp. 1212-1231
Author(s):  
Jose M. Lanza-Gutierrez ◽  
Ricardo Soto ◽  
Broderick Crawford ◽  
Juan A. Gomez-Pulido ◽  
Nicolas Fernandez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Design Problem ◽  
Manufacturing Industry ◽  
Group Technology ◽  
Optimization Problems ◽  
Continuous Optimization ◽  
Cell Design ◽  
Manufacturing Cell ◽  
Great Consideration ◽  
Np Hard Problem ◽  
Continuous Optimization Problems

Group technology has acquired a great consideration in the last years. This technique allows including the advantages of serial production to any manufacturing industry by dividing a manufacturing plant into a set of machine-part cells. The identification and formation of the cells are known as the Manufacturing Cell Design Problem (MCDP), which is an NP-hard problem. In this paper, the authors propose to solve the problem through a swarm intelligence metaheuristic called ElectroMagnetism-like (EM-like) algorithm, which is inspired by the attraction-repulsion mechanism of particles in the context of the electromagnetic theory. The original EM-like algorithm was designed for solving continuous optimization problems, while the MCDP is usually formulated by assuming a binary approach. Hence, the authors propose an adaptation of this algorithm for addressing the problem. Such adaptation is applied for solving a freely available dataset of the MCDP, obtaining competitive results compared to recent approaches.

Applying an Electromagnetism-Like Algorithm for Solving the Manufacturing Cell Design Problem

2017 ◽  
pp. 37-61
Author(s):  
Jose M. Lanza-Gutierrez ◽  
Ricardo Soto ◽  
Broderick Crawford ◽  
Juan A. Gomez-Pulido ◽  
Nicolas Fernandez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Design Problem ◽  
Manufacturing Industry ◽  
Group Technology ◽  
Optimization Problems ◽  
Continuous Optimization ◽  
Cell Design ◽  
Manufacturing Cell ◽  
Great Consideration ◽  
Np Hard Problem ◽  
Continuous Optimization Problems

Group technology has acquired a great consideration in the last years. This technique allows including the advantages of serial production to any manufacturing industry by dividing a manufacturing plant into a set of machine-part cells. The identification and formation of the cells are known as the Manufacturing Cell Design Problem (MCDP), which is an NP-hard problem. In this paper, the authors propose to solve the problem through a swarm intelligence metaheuristic called ElectroMagnetism-like (EM-like) algorithm, which is inspired by the attraction-repulsion mechanism of particles in the context of the electromagnetic theory. The original EM-like algorithm was designed for solving continuous optimization problems, while the MCDP is usually formulated by assuming a binary approach. Hence, the authors propose an adaptation of this algorithm for addressing the problem. Such adaptation is applied for solving a freely available dataset of the MCDP, obtaining competitive results compared to recent approaches.

scholarly journals Solving the Manufacturing Cell Design Problem through an Autonomous Water Cycle Algorithm

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (22) ◽  
pp. 4736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Soto ◽  
Broderick Crawford ◽  
Jose M. Lanza-Gutierrez ◽  
Rodrigo Olivares ◽  
Pablo Camacho ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Design Problem ◽  
Optimization Problems ◽  
Water Cycle ◽  
Search Space ◽  
Cell Design ◽  
Optimal Solutions ◽  
Simple Task ◽  
Manufacturing Cell ◽  
Parameter Configuration ◽  
Problem Solvers

Metaheuristics are multi-purpose problem solvers devoted to particularly tackle large instances of complex optimization problems. However, in spite of the relevance of metaheuristics in the optimization world, their proper design and implementation to reach optimal solutions is not a simple task. Metaheuristics require an initial parameter configuration, which is dramatically relevant for the efficient exploration and exploitation of the search space, and therefore to the effective finding of high-quality solutions. In this paper, the authors propose a variation of the water cycle inspired metaheuristic capable of automatically adjusting its parameter by using the autonomous search paradigm. The goal of our proposal is to explore and to exploit promising regions of the search space to rapidly converge to optimal solutions. To validate the proposal, we tested 160 instances of the manufacturing cell design problem, which is a relevant problem for the industry, whose objective is to minimize the number of movements and exchanges of parts between organizational elements called cells. As a result of the experimental analysis, the authors checked that the proposal performs similarly to the default approach, but without being specifically configured for solving the problem.

A Study of the Continuous Optimization Problem Using a Wood Robot Controlled by a Biologically Motivated System

2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jong-Chen Chen
Keyword(s):  
Physical Environment ◽  
Intelligent System ◽  
Optimization Problems ◽  
Learning Algorithm ◽  
Continuous Optimization ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Selection Operators ◽  
Continuous Optimization Problems

Continuous optimization plays an increasingly significant role in everyday decision-making situations. Our group had previously developed a multilevel system called the artificial neuromolecular system (ANM) that possessed structure richness allowing variation and/or selection operators to act on it in order to generate a broad range of dynamic behaviors. In this paper, we used the ANM system to control the motions of a wooden walking robot named Miky. The robot was used to investigate the ANM system's capability to deal with continuous optimization problems through self-organized learning. Evolutionary learning algorithm was used to train the system and generate appropriate control. The experimental results showed that Miky was capable of learning in a continued manner in a physical environment. A further experiment was conducted by making some changes to Miky's physical structure in order to observe the system's capability to deal with the change. Detailed analysis of the experimental results showed that Miky responded to the change by appropriately adjusting its leg movements in space and time. The results showed that the ANM system possessed continuous optimization capability in coping with the change. Our findings from the empirical experiments might provide us another dimension of information of how to design an intelligent system comparatively friendlier than the traditional systems in assisting humans to walk.

scholarly journals A Particle Swarm Based Algorithm for Functional Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (05) ◽  
pp. 7111-7118
Author(s):  
Moumita Choudhury ◽  
Saaduddin Mahmud ◽  
Md. Mosaddek Khan
Keyword(s):  
Optimization Problems ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Particle Swarm ◽  
Continuous Optimization ◽  
Continuous Variables ◽  
Constraint Optimization ◽  
Solution Quality ◽  
Distributed Constraint Optimization ◽  
Continuous Optimization Problems ◽  
Constraint Optimization Problems

Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems (DCOPs) are a widely studied constraint handling framework. The objective of a DCOP algorithm is to optimize a global objective function that can be described as the aggregation of several distributed constraint cost functions. In a DCOP, each of these functions is defined by a set of discrete variables. However, in many applications, such as target tracking or sleep scheduling in sensor networks, continuous valued variables are more suited than the discrete ones. Considering this, Functional DCOPs (F-DCOPs) have been proposed that can explicitly model a problem containing continuous variables. Nevertheless, state-of-the-art F-DCOPs approaches experience onerous memory or computation overhead. To address this issue, we propose a new F-DCOP algorithm, namely Particle Swarm based F-DCOP (PFD), which is inspired by a meta-heuristic, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). Although it has been successfully applied to many continuous optimization problems, the potential of PSO has not been utilized in F-DCOPs. To be exact, PFD devises a distributed method of solution construction while significantly reducing the computation and memory requirements. Moreover, we theoretically prove that PFD is an anytime algorithm. Finally, our empirical results indicate that PFD outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches in terms of solution quality and computation overhead.

scholarly journals A Dynamic Adjusting Novel Global Harmony Search for Continuous Optimization Problems

Symmetry ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chui-Yu Chiu ◽  
Po-Chou Shih ◽  
Xuechao Li
Keyword(s):  
Optimization Problems ◽  
Harmony Search ◽  
Continuous Optimization ◽  
Genetic Mutation ◽  
Dynamic Adjustment ◽  
Mutation Probability ◽  
Adjustment Strategy ◽  
Improved Harmony Search ◽  
Searching Ability ◽  
Continuous Optimization Problems

A novel global harmony search (NGHS) algorithm, as proposed in 2010, is an improved algorithm that combines the harmony search (HS), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and a genetic algorithm (GA). Moreover, the fixed parameter of mutation probability was used in the NGHS algorithm. However, appropriate parameters can enhance the searching ability of a metaheuristic algorithm, and their importance has been described in many studies. Inspired by the adjustment strategy of the improved harmony search (IHS) algorithm, a dynamic adjusting novel global harmony search (DANGHS) algorithm, which combines NGHS and dynamic adjustment strategies for genetic mutation probability, is introduced in this paper. Moreover, extensive computational experiments and comparisons are carried out for 14 benchmark continuous optimization problems. The results show that the proposed DANGHS algorithm has better performance in comparison with other HS algorithms in most problems. In addition, the proposed algorithm is more efficient than previous methods. Finally, different strategies are suitable for different situations. Among these strategies, the most interesting and exciting strategy is the periodic dynamic adjustment strategy. For a specific problem, the periodic dynamic adjustment strategy could have better performance in comparison with other decreasing or increasing strategies. These results inspire us to further investigate this kind of periodic dynamic adjustment strategy in future experiments.

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