Human-Oriented Dynamic Task Reallocation and Rescheduling in Cellular Manufacturing Systems

Cellular manufacturing systems are well known as flexible and reliable manufacturing systems for assembly processes. A suitable control method is required for the cellular manufacturing systems to keep the production capacity in the case where unforeseen changes, such as delays of assembly processes, addition of new orders, and unscheduled workers' absences, occur during the progress of assembly processes. This research proposes a dynamic task reallocation and rescheduling method in the cellular manufacturing systems, consisting of a set of assembly cells in which all the assembly processes are carried out by single workers. The method proposed here dynamically modifies an initial production schedule and minimizes the total tardiness by a genetic algorithm and a heuristic rule, called as EDD (Earliest Due Date), to cope with unforeseen changes in the cellular manufacturing systems. A prototype of dynamic task reallocation and rescheduling system was developed and applied to some computational experiments in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method.