Design and Optimization of Loop Layout in Flexible Manufacturing System using Particle Swarm Optimization

To design any manufacturing setup we need to focus on design of facility layout and it has a huge impact on the performance of the manufacturing system. so the Optimum arrangement of layout is important in order to achieve high productivity in flexible manufacturing system (FMS). The objective of the loop layout problem is the determination of the ordering of machines around a loop, to minimize the total number of loop traversals for a family of parts. The problem we address is to design the layout of the system so that the number of machines that the part types cross in their manufacturing process is minimized. We formulate the problem mathematically and solve it by a meta-heuristics that obtains consistently better results than an earlier popular method. Since, optimum arrangements of layout is a combinatorial problem so finding the best combination out of millions of combinations is a challenging task and can't be solve using conventional techniques. Therefore, this paper details the design, development and testing of particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique to solve the loop layout problem. The proposed method is validated with bench mark problems. Here PSO algorithm is proposed for obtaining the optimal solution of unidirectional loop layout design problem of various FMS models.