Concurrent Scheduling of Machines and Tools without Tool Delay in a Multi Machine FMS using Flower Pollination Algorithm

This paper deals with machines and tools joint scheduling in a multi-machine flexible manufacturing system to minimize makespan with the lowest possible copies of every type of tool without tool delay. The tools are placed in a central tool magazine that shares with and serves several machines. The problem is determining the lowest possible copies of every type of tool, allocation of tool copies to job-operations, and job-operations’ sequencing on machines without tool delay for makespan minimization. This paper proposes a nonlinear mixed integer programming formulation to model this simultaneous scheduling problem and flower pollination algorithm based on the flowers’ pollination process for solving this problem. The results have been tabulated, analyzed, and compared.