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Engineering Applications of Articial Intelligence

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engappai

A modied genetic algorithm approach for scheduling of perfect maintenance in distributed production scheduling
S.H. Chung a,, Felix T.S. Chan a, H.K. Chan b
a b

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong Norwich Business School, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, UK

a r t i c l e in fo
Article history: Received 10 March 2008 Received in revised form 14 September 2008 Accepted 3 November 2008 Available online 9 January 2009 Keywords: Distributed scheduling Multi-factory production Production scheduling Perfect maintenance Genetic algorithms

abstract
Distributed Scheduling (DS) problems have attracted attention by researchers in recent years. DS problems in multi-factory production are much more complicated than classical scheduling problems because they involve not only the scheduling problems in a single factory, but also the problems in the higher level, which is: how to allocate the jobs to suitable factories. It mainly focuses on solving two issues simultaneously: (i) allocation of jobs to suitable factories and (ii) determination of the corresponding production schedules in each factory. Its objective is to maximize system efciency by nding an optimal plan for a better collaboration among various processes. However, in many papers, machine maintenance has usually been ignored during the production scheduling. In reality, every machine requires maintenance, which will directly inuence the machines availability, and consequently the planned production schedule. The objective of this paper is to propose a modied genetic algorithm approach to deal with those DS models with maintenance consideration, aiming to minimize the makespan of the jobs. Its optimization performance has been compared with other existing approaches to demonstrate its reliability. This paper also tests the inuence of the relationship between the maintenance repairing time and the machine age to the performance of scheduling of maintenance during DS in the studied models. & 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Distributed Scheduling (DS) problem in the multi-factory production model is a popular issue to researchers and industrialists in recent years due to the changes of production environment. Nowadays, markets are frequently shifting. New technologies are continuously emerging and the number of competitors is globally soaring. To increase the international competitiveness and responsiveness to the market changes, many companies have to change their production model from traditional single-factory to multifactory, by building new factories, merging, factory acquisition, etc. (Shen and Norrie, 1999; Lau et al., 2006). In a multi-factory model, each factory is usually capable of manufacturing a variety of product types. Some may be unique in a particular factory, while some may not. They are subject to different constraints, such as machine technology, labor skills, labor cost, government policy, tax, local suppliers, transportation facilities, etc. As a result, different factories have different operating costs, production lead times, customer service levels, efciency, etc., and these induce the DS problems in multi-factory production environment (Timpe and Kallrath, 2000). DS problems can be considered as a set of processes subject to various constraints and are executed in different locations. DS has gained an increasing importance and is applied in a wide range of areas, from multimedia to industrial control, and extensive efforts have been invested in solving various open research issues (Kim et al., 1996; Sandholm, 2000; Wang and Wu, 2003; Vincent and Stephen, 2004). In general, DS problems in multi-factory production can be divided into two main issues: (i) allocation of jobs to suitable factories and (ii) determination of the production scheduling in each factory (Barroso et al., 2002). Classical production scheduling problems deal with the scheduling of jobs on different machines. Nowadays, high-tech machinery like that in FMS usually consumes a large amount of capital (Shriskandarajah and Sethi, 1989; Ghosh and Gaimon, 1992; Lee and Vairktarakis, 1998; Shnits et al., 2004; Priore et al., 2006). Although these machines are more advanced and reliable than those in the past, they are still

Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: mfnick@inet.polyu.edu.hk (S.H. Chung), ftschan@hkucc.hku.hk (F.T.S. Chan), H.Chan@uea.ac.uk (H.K. Chan). 0952-1976/$ - see front matter & 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.engappai.2008.11.004

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subject to deterioration because of ageing. Deterioration may result in various consequences, such as lower production rates and lower product quality. Thus, maintenance is inevitable. However, maintenance will inuence the machine availability, meaning that the operation planned on that machine in the production schedule will be interrupted/delayed. Therefore, optimization of maintenance planning should be simultaneously planned with the determination of production scheduling. This paper is divided into the following. Next section gives a literature review. Section 3 describes the studied DS models with the consideration of maintenance scheduling. Section 4 presents the proposed optimization methodology. Section 5 discusses the optimization results through some numerical examples. Lastly, the paper will be concluded in Section 6.

2. Literature review Research in distributed scheduling problem has been conducted by many researchers for many years (Bullinger et al., 1997; Trentesaux et al., 1998; Gnonia et al., 2003). Timpe and Kallrath (2000) studied the multi-factory models in food and chemical industry. In which, each factory can produce different types of food according to the needs of the market and is subject to production-capacity constraints. They proposed a mixed integer programming approach to solve the problem of job allocation. Guinet (2001) studied a multi-factory model in which the factories are located close to the customers in various countries subject to irregular demand. He proposed a primaldual heuristic approach to determine the production plans at the global level and the job shop scheduling in various local workshops. Jia et al. (2002) proposed a web-based system approach to enable production scheduling in a multi-factory model. They proposed a GA-based scheduling algorithm to optimize the scheduling problem. Jia et al. (2003) have further modied their GA and compared the reliability with other classical single-factory scheduling problems and heuristic approaches, and the results obtained were satisfactory. Leung et al. (2003) studied a multinational lingerie company, which produces a number of product types. The factories are located in different countries, including China, the Philippines, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian countries. They proposed a goal programming approach to solve the job allocation problem subject to capacity constraints. In fact, there are many literatures in dealing with distributed scheduling problems. However, there is a lack of paper studying the maintenance optimization with distributed scheduling. In literatures, the signicance of coordination between maintenance planning and production scheduling has been shown by many researchers (Benbouzid et al., 2003; Ji et al., 2007). In a repairable system, maintenance can be classied into three types according to the condition of the machine after the maintenance action (Pham and Wang, 1996; Cher and Nagarajan, 2008; Yi-Hui, 2007). (i) Perfect maintenance (PM): after repair, the condition of every component is assumed to be as good as new. The system will have the same failure rate function as a brand new one (Zhang and Wang, 1996; Zhang and Lam, 1998; Lim and Lee, 2000). (ii) Minimal maintenance (MM): the condition of the system is assumed to be like just before failure, meaning that the failure rate is the same as the one before failure (Ascher, 1968). This is also named as as bad as old. (iii) Imperfect maintenance (IM): after repair, the components are assumed to be back to a less-deteriorated condition, in which not all the damage is completely recovered (Nakagawa, 1979; Brown and Proschan, 1983). The failure rate is somewhere between as good as new and as bad as old. In general, maintenance planning can be classied into planned maintenance and unplanned one (Corder, 1976; Zhang and Wang, 1996; Ascher, 1968; Lim and Lee, 2000; Levitin and Lisnianski, 2000; Gharbi and Kenne, 2000; Wang and Usher, 2005). Planned maintenance refers to the work performed according to a scheduled plan, such as preventive maintenance. Unplanned maintenance refers to the work that is performed promptly to avoid serious consequences on the resources and system performance and to keep the system safe. Rishel and Christy (1996) stated that the relationship between the departments of maintenance and production is conicting in nature. The production managers want the machines to operate 24 h per day, while the maintenance managers require the machines to stop operation for maintenance. For this reason, some factories maintenance policies are emergency maintenance. However, Elsayed and Dhillon (1979) and Lamber et al. (1971) stated that such policy is very costly compared with other policies. Therefore, a proper design and integration of maintenance management with production planning and scheduling can increase the effectiveness of management (Nikolopoulos et al., 2003). If the production schedule obtained from DS does not consider maintenance, the planning determined will be seriously interrupted because of the mismatch among various processes. Consequently, the system reliability will be damaged and the purpose of DS will be failed. Machine maintenance is inevitable. In reality, machine has to be maintained after certain operating time either regularly or irregularly (Zhou et al., 2004). Every machine usually follows its own distribution form of failure and repair function. Peres and Noyes (2003) carried out a statistical analysis to identify those functions. They collected the data from 50 pieces of numeric control machines (lathe and milling). They stated that the failure of multi-component systems, such as FMS, could be characterized by a progressive failure of a certain number of entities or by a common failure distribution rate for the whole system. They also demonstrated a normalized repair distribution rate for various types of failure, such as electric, mechanic, computer, and others. Vineyard et al. (1999) studied the failure and repair function of each component in some FMSs, including the mechanical components, electronic, hydraulic, electro-mechanical, software, etc. They reported that each type of component has different failure distribution and repair distribution rates. They collected the empirical data and testied it by comparing it with the theoretical one. Some researchers adopted the machine age to indicate measure and estimate the machine condition (Boukas and Haurie, 1990). It reects the expected/estimated inspection time, repairing time, production rate and quality, failure rate, etc. After each time of maintenance, the machine age has to be adjusted, depending on the type of maintenance carried out. A new set of inspection time, repairing time, production rate, and product quality will be generated (Tsai et al., 2001).

3. Problem description The following notations are used to describe the problem studied throughout the paper: f i index for factory, f 1, y, F, where F is the number of factories index for job, i 1, y, I, where I is the number of job.

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j h k Dif Tijfh M Sij Eij Ci

wif
dijfhk

gijfh

index for operation, j 1, y, Ni, where Ni is the number of operation in job i index for machine, h 1, y, Hf, where Hf is the number of machines in factory f index for time slot, k 1, y, K, where K is the maximum time horizon The delivery time required to deliver product from the location of factory f to the location of job i operating lead time of operation j of job i on machine h in factory f maximum machine age starting time of operation j of job i ending time of operation j of job i completion time of job i 1, if job i is allocated to factory f 0, otherwise 1, if operation j of job i occupies time slot k on machine h in factory f 0, otherwise 1, if machine h in factory f is maintained after operation j of job i 0, otherwise

The multi-factory model consists of F factories, which are geographically distributed in different locations. Each factory has Hf machine. Each machine can perform various operations with different operating lead times (Tijfh). Each machine is subject to a maximum machine age M. Machine age is dened as the cumulated operating time. If the machine age reaches M, maintenance has to be carried out right after the completion of the operating operation. After maintenance, the machine age will be reset to 0 as shown in Fig. 1. The time required in maintenance may vary depending on the machine age. In common practice, the relationship between the required maintenance time and the machine age are usually collected empirically. The problem is to satisfy I jobs and each job has Ni operations. The traveling time between the factory f and the job i is symbolized by Dif. The objective of the problem is to minimize the makespan of the jobs. The decision variables are wif, dijfhk, and gijfh. With the solution wif, dijfhk, and gijfh obtained, the value of Sij, Eij, and Ci can be calculated. The objective function is shown as Objective Z : MINmaxfC i g (3.1)

Completion time (Ci) of job i equals the summation of the completion time of the last operation of the job and the delivering time between the factory and the job. The problem is subject to the following constraints: Precedence constraints: Sij XEij1 i 1; 2; . . . ; I; j 2; 3; . . . ; N i (3.2)

Processing time constraints: X Eij Sij wif T ijfh i 1; 2; . . . ; I; j 1; 2; . . . ; Ni

fh

(3.3)

X
fhk

dijfhk

X
fh

wif T ijfh i 1; 2; . . . ; I; j 1; 2; . . . ; N i

(3.4)

Operation constraints: X dijfhk 1 i 1; 2; . . . ; I; j 1; 2; . . . ; N i

fhk

(3.5)

Processing operation constraints: X dijfhk p1 i 1; 2; . . . ; I; j 1; 2; . . . ; Ni ; k 1; 2; . . . ; K

fh

(3.6)

Machine capacity constraints: X dijfhk p1 k 1; 2; . . . ; K; h 1; 2; . . . ; Hf ; f 1; 2; . . . ; F

ij

(3.7)

Machine Age Operating M

Maintenance

Idling 0 Time Horizon

Fig. 1. A Sample of modeling of machine age for a machine when reaching maximum machine age.

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Factory constraints: X wif 1 i 1; 2; . . . ; I

f

(3.8)

Refer to the above constraints, constraint (3.2) denes that each operation can only start upon completion of its preceding operation. Constraint (3.3) denes that once an operation starts, it will carry on without interruption. Constraint (3.4) indicates that the allocated time slot equals the required operation time. Constraint (3.5) denes that each operation should be carried out on one machine throughout the horizon. Constraint (3.6) denes that each operation can only be carried out on one machine at each time unit, and constraint (3.7) denes that each machine can carry out only one operation at a time unit. Constraint (3.8) denes that each job can only be allocated to one factory.

4. Optimization methodology The optimization methodology developed in this paper is based on the approach proposed by the authors as published in the paper (Chan et al., 2006) named Genetic Algorithm with Dominant Gene (GADG). The idea of DGs is to identify and record the best genes in each chromosome, and the corresponding structure. In that paper, the GADG approach has been compared to various approaches in some multi-factory production problems to demonstrate its optimization reliability. The encoding of chromosome approach is the same. However, it is found that in the original GADG approach, the local searching ability is weak. Thus, this paper proposes a modied GADG approach as discussed in the following sections. The improvement of the optimization performance for the modied approach will be tested in Section 5. P Each chromosome consists of iNi genes. Each gene consists of 6 parameters (FMJOSD), representing the Factory of the job allocated, the Machine assigned on, the Job and its Operation, the Scheduling of maintenance after the operation, and the Domination of the gene. If maintenance is scheduled, then the S parameter will denoted as 1, otherwise 0. Similarly, D parameter will be denoted as 1 if the gene is a dominant gene, otherwise 0. Fig. 2 shows an example of an encoding and the decoding of a chromosome. In which, 3 jobs (each has 2 operations) is allocated into 2 factories. The scheduling priority of operations is from the highest on the left to the lowest on the right. Thus, the rst gene 111100 has the highest priority to occupy the machine (M1) in factory 1 (F1). Then second gene 213110, indicating Operations 3 of Job 3, can occupy machine (M1) in factory (F2) earlier than the Operation 2 of Job 2. In addition, the gene indicates that the machine will be maintained after the operation.

4.1. Basic genetic operations In this approach, the initial solution pool is randomly generated. However, each chromosome must be valid. The selection operation applies the roulette wheel selection approach. In order to prevent the loss of the best chromosome during evolutions, elitist strategy is applied. The best chromosome will be identied and recorded during each evolution. If the best chromosome in the new generation is lost or becomes weaker after evolution, the recorded one will be inserted back into the mating pool for the next evolution. The tness value of a chromosome k is calculated by the makespan of the chromosome k divided by the summation of all the makespan of all the n chromosome in the solution pool as shown: ! , X (4.1) maxfC i gn f k 1 maxfci g
n

FMJOSDFMJOSDFMJOSDFMJOSDFMJOSDFMJOSD

111100 213110 121200 212200 222100 223200

M1 Factory 1 M2

J1O1 J1O2

M1 Factory 2 M2

J3O1 J2O1

Maintenance

J2O2

J3O2 Time Horizon

Fig. 2. A sample of (a) encoding and (b) decoding of a chromosome.

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4.2. Crossover operation The main purpose of crossover operation is to import into a chromosome the structure of another chromosome and hopefully which will increase its strength (tness value). In the modied approach, the DGs represent the critical structure of a chromosome, meaning this part creating the most valuable characteristic. During crossover, each pair of parents will form a pair of offspring(s). The whole set of DGs from one of the parent will be selected to form the initial framework of its offspring. Then it will import the DGs from another parent as shown in detail below. The steps for the crossover operation are as shown in the following example. Step 1: offspring O1 imports the DGs from P2 (2nd gene: 211101). Step 2: O1 imports the DGs from P1 (1st and 8th genes: 123311, 113111). Step 3: ll in the missing genes (remaining operations of the job) from P1 to O1 (missing genes sequence: 121210, 222110, 111300, 212300, 232200, 113200). Step 4: adjust the allocation of jobs to other factories according to the imported DG. In the example, since Job 1 is allocated to Factory 1 in P1, the genes with Job 1 have to be adjusted to Factory 2 so that the chromosome becomes valid. Similar steps will be carried out for O2. Step 1: offspring O2 imports the DGs from P1 (1st and 8th genes: 123311, 113111). Step 2: O2 imports the DGs from P2 (2nd gene: 211101). Step 3: ll in the missing genes from P2 to O2 (missing genes sequence: 222300, 221300, 232100, 212200, 231210, 133200). Step 4: in this case, Job 3 is allocated to Factory 1 in P2. It is similar to the allocation result in P1. The chromosome is valid without adjustment.
P1: P2: Step 1 2 3 4 O1: Step 1 2 3 4 O2: 123311 222300 0 123311 123311 123311 123311 121210 211101 211101 211101 211101 211101 211101 111100 221300 0 0 121210 221210 221210 222110 232100 0 0 222110 222110 222110 111300 212200 0 0 111300 211300 211300 212300 231210 0 0 212300 212300 212300 232200 113100 0 0 232200 232200 232200 113111 133200 0 113111 113111 113111 113111 113200 123300 0 0 113200 113200 113200

123311 123311 123311 123311 123310

0 211101 211101 211101 211101

0 0 222300 211100 211100

0 0 221300 221300 221300

0 0 232100 212201 212201

0 0 212200 232100 232100

0 0 231210 231210 231210

113111 113111 113111 113111 113110

0 0 133200 133200 133200

In the case that if the DGs are conicted between the two parents either at the same location(s) or job(s), the conicted DGs in one of the parents will be ignored. For example, the underlined genes are conicting in the same location in P1 and P2, and conicting with the same job in P3 and P4 as shown in the following chromosomes. In this case, during the formation of O1, the DG (123311) in P1 will be ignored, while for that of O2, the DG (222301) will be ignored:
P1: P2: P3: P4: 123311 222301 123311 222300 121210 211100 121210 211100 111101 221300 111100 221300 222110 232100 222110 232100 111300 212200 111300 212200 212300 231210 212300 231210 232200 113100 232200 113100 113111 133200 113111 133200 113200 123300 113200 123301

4.3. Mutation operation Two types of mutation will be applied, and both are one-point mutation rates, which enhance the ability of local searching. In Mutation 1, a number of genes will be randomly swapped among a chromosome. The pair of the swapping genes must be in the same factory and on the same machine as shown in the following. This mechanism increases the opportunities of testing different production priority of the operations and jobs without changing the allocation of jobs.
Before: After: 123311 121210 121210 123311 111101 111101 222110 222110 111300 111300 212300 212300 232200 232200 113111 113111 113200 113200

In Mutation 2, each time only one of the parameters M, F, or S undergoes mutation in the selected gene(s). Parameters J and O will not mutate here because if they mutate, it will be similar to Mutation 1. In the following example, the fourth gene mutates in M parameter, changing from M2 to M3.
Before: After: 123311 123311 121210 121210 111101 111101 222110 232110 111300 111300 212300 212300 232200 232200 113111 113111 113200 113200

However, if the F parameter mutates, some adjustments have to be taken to change all the related operations of that job to be allocated to the same factory so that the chromosome becomes valid. For the example shown below, the F parameter in the fourth gene changes

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Generate Initial Pool Crossover/Mutation Evaluate Fitness Value No Selection operation Elitist strategies Check Stopping Yes End
Fig. 3. The genetic evolution outline proposed in the old approach (Chan et al., 2006).

Generate Initial Pool

Crossover operation

or

Mutation operation Type

Evaluate Fitness Value

Mutation operation Type

No

Selection operation

Evaluate Fitness Value No

Elitist strategies

Elitist strategies Yes Yes

Check Stopping

Stopping until Loop = (iNi )/10 times

End Improve local searching

Fig. 4. The modied genetic evolution outline proposed in this paper.

from F2 to F1. Since the sixth and seventh genes are related to the fourth one because of the job relationship, their F parameters have to change to F1 as well.
Before: After: 123311 123311 121210 121210 111101 111101 222110 122110 111300 111300 212300 112300 232200 132200 113111 113111 113200 113200

4.4. Prevention of premature and local search To prevent the premature and local search, adaptive strategy is applied. Similarity checking is carried out to measure the saturation of the chromosomes in the solution pool. During the similarity checking, two genes are regarded as identical when their F, M, J, O, and S parameters are the same. The D parameter will not be considered because it does not inuence the production schedule. For the example below, the rst gene (123311) in P1 indicates that O3 of J3 is allocated to F1 on M2 and will be maintained after the operation. This gene is identical to the ninth gene (123310) in P2 and the rst gene (123311) in P3 because they have the same allocation result, machine selection result, and maintenance plan for the same job operation. Since the solution pool has only 4 chromosomes, but 3 genes are the same, the solution pool is saturated. The choice of allocating that job operation to other factory and machine becomes fewer. In this example, the only choice is to allocate it to F1 on M1. This will lower the ability of the genetic search.
P1: P2: P3: P4: 123311 222301 123311 222300 121210 211100 121210 211100 111101 221300 111100 221300 222110 232100 222110 232100 111300 212200 111300 212200 212300 231210 212300 231210 232200 113100 232200 113100 113111 133200 113111 133200 113200 123310 113200 113301

In order to maintain the diversity of the solution pool, mutation will be carried out on those genes.

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4.5. Genetic evolutions The evolution mechanism of the genetic algorithm proposed by Chan et al. (2006) is shown in Fig. 3. In which, the crossover and mutation operations will perform alternatively during each evolution. However, it is found that such an approach will lower the local searching ability because the optimization of the production scheduling part has played a less signicant role. Thus, in this paper, the P evolution approach is being modied as shown in Fig. 4. In which, the mutation operation Type 1 will run ( iNi)/10 times, which is 10% of the total number of operations, during each evolution. Since the function of mutation Type 1 is to change the production priority of the operations, more production schedule(s) can be tested based on the same set of job allocation result. This can improve the local searching ability.

5. Numerical examples 5.1. Example 1 The objective of this example is to test the optimization performance of the proposed modied GADG approach in classical production scheduling problem. The problem is found in literatures, which have been studied by Lee and DiCesare (1994), Kumar et al. (2003), and Chan et al. (2006). The problem consists of 5 jobs and each job has 4 operations. Each operation can be performed on more than one of the three machines. The objective of the problem is to minimize the makespan of the jobs. The optimization results found by them are shown in Table 1. In this paper, the modied GADG approach has been independently run for 50 times on a personal computer with 2.2 GHz to measure the deviation of the solution obtained. The solution pool is set as 50 and the number of evolution is 5000, which is long enough to obtain a steady solution. The computational time for each trial is about 15 s. The average makespan obtained for the 50 trails is 358 unit time, with the standard deviation of 8.36, and the best result found is 350 unit time. It has 2.78% improvement compared to the original GADG approach. The detail production schedule for the best result is shown in Fig. 5. This comparison demonstrates that the modied GADG approach is better. 5.2. Example 2 The optimization performance will also be tested in distributed scheduling problem, which was studied by Chan et al. (2006). The problem consists of two factories and each has three machines. It has 10 jobs and each has four operations. The best value found in that paper is 1220 unit time, with the total maintenance time spent equal to 3060 unit time. Similarly, the modied GADG approach has been independently run for 50 times to measure the deviation of the solution obtained. The solution pool is set as 50 and the number of evolution is 5000, which is long enough to obtain a steady solution. The computational time for each trial is about 1 min. The best value obtained is 930 unit time, which has (23.8% improvement compared to the original approach). The total maintenance time spent is 2350 unit time (180+180+150+140+140+140+140+180+180+140+140+200+160+140+140), which has a 23.2% improvement as shown in the production schedule in Fig. 6. The standard deviation of the solution measured is 12.8. The results demonstrate that the modied approach is better. 5.3. Example 3 In this example, the objective is to test whether the relationship between the time required for maintenance and the machine age will inuence the results of simultaneously solving maintenance scheduling with DS. For this reason, four different relationship models have

Table 1 Optimization results obtained by various approaches for Lee and DiCesares model. Authors Lee and DiCesare (1994) Kumar et al. (2003) Chan et al. (2006) Approach Petri nets Ant colony GADG Modied GADG Optimization results 439 420 360 350

Fig. 5. The production schedule obtained for Example 1.

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Fig. 6. The production schedule obtained for Example 2.

700 Maintenance Time Maintenance Time 1 21 41 61 81 101 121 141 161 181 600 500 400 300 200 100 0

350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0

1 14 27 40 53 66 79 92 5 11 8 13 1 14 4 15 7 17 0 3 18 10

Machine Age 700 600 Maintenance Time Maintenance Time 500 400 300 200 100 0
53 66 1 14 27 40 79 92 10 5 11 8 13 1 14 4 15 7 17 0 18 3 19 6

Machine Age

350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0

92 10 5 11 8 13 1 14 4 15 7 17 0 18 3 19 6 1 14 27 40 53 66 79

Machine Age

Machine Age

Fig. 7. Various relationships between maintenance time and machine age for the machines in the Models 1, 2, 3 and 4: (a) linear relationship, (b) exponential relationship, (c) constant relationship and (d) 2-level constant relationship.

been studied as shown in Fig. 7ad. Fig. 7a shows a linear relationship between the maintenance time required and the machine age. The maintenance time equals three times of the machine age (i.e., after the machine has being operating for 20 h, then the corresponding maintenance time required is 60 h). Fig. 7b shows an exponential relationship, which is similar to the one presented by Peres and Noyes (2003) to model the maintenance time for some electric, mechanic, and computer components. Fig. 7c shows a constant relationship, which is similar to modeling the maintenance time for those maintenance operations in which the whole component will be replaced with a new one instead of repair, and Fig. 7d shows a 2-level constant relationship. For all the models, the maximum operating limit is 200 units of time. Beyond the limit, the maintenance time required is 720 units of time, which is 20% more than the maximum maintenance time required for planned maintenance. Three multi-factory models will be randomly generated. Each model consists of 2 factories and each factory has 3 machines. The traveling time from the factories to the jobs are randomly generated between 1020 units of time. Each job has 4 operations, and the operation time is randomly generated between 10150 units of time. Model 1 has 10 jobs, Model 2 has 20 jobs, and Model 3 has 30 jobs. Each relationship model will be independently used to model the machines. For the sake of comparison, rst of all, maintenance scheduling will not be considered with DS. The maintenance will take place when the machine age reaches its maximum operating limit (M). In another approach, maintenance scheduling will be considered with DS. Similarly, the modied GADG approach has been independently run for 50 times. The computational time for each trial is about 10 s, 1 min, and 4 min. For the reason of simplication of comparison, Table 2 summarizes the optimization results, which are the best results obtained in the 50 runs in each model. In Model 1, based on the same set of problem parameters, the makespan obtained from the second approach is 1060 in linear relationship. It goes down to 720 when relationship in machines is changed to the exponential model. It

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Table 2 Comparison of the performance in different maintenance curves. Linear Model 1 No maintenance With maintenance 1170 1060 Exponential 830 720 Constant 1220 1030 2-Level 820 750

Model 2

No maintenance With maintenance

2990 2770

1950 1730

2560 2400

2170 1740

Model 3

No maintenance With maintenance

5130 4380

2990 2860

4240 3730

3750 3480

increases again to 1030 in constant relationship and reduces to 750 in 2-level constant relationship. Similar patterns can be found in the other two models. In addition, the makespan obtained in the second approach is better in all the relationships in all the 3 models. This demonstrates that scheduling of maintenance should be considered simultaneously during DS without being inuenced by the relationship between maintenance time required and the machine age.

6. Conclusion This paper proposed a modied GADG approach, which is developed based on the approach proposed by Chan et al. (2006). It improves the local searching ability of the original GADG approach by iteratively solving the jobs allocation problem and scheduling of production with the maintenance problem. In order to verify the optimization performance of the proposed approach, it has been compared with other existing approaches, including Petri Nets, Ant Colony, and the original GADG, in example 1, which is a classical production scheduling problem. The results demonstrate that the optimization reliability of the proposed approach is better. In example 2, the proposed approach is compared with the original approach proposed by Chan et al. (2006), and the optimization results indicate that the new approach can obtain a better solution for the problem, studied by Chan et al. (2006), with 23.2% improvement. Lastly in example 3, this paper tests the inuence of the relationship between the maintenance time and the machine age to the performance of scheduling maintenance with DS. Three DS models have been randomly generated with the application of different relationship models, including linear, exponential, constant, and 2-level constant, to the machines. It compared the results with the consideration of maintenance and without maintenance, and the results demonstrate that scheduling of maintenance simultaneously with DS is better. References
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