Research Initiation Award: Parallel Approach to Simultaneous Optimization of Cell Layout and Intercell Material Flow Paths

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This research involves parallel computation for simultaneous optimization of cell layout and intercell material flow paths. A simultaneous design of cell layout and intercell material flow paths provides a more detailed picture for a rapidly analyzing alternative configurations compared to treating block layout design and material flow design as separate or sequential problems. Two modes of parallel computation will be used: (1) intrinsic parallel approach, which will be based on a genetic algorithm and (2) vectorization approach for parallel computation of a hill climbing algorithm, which will be experimented on a supercomputer Object-oriented programming is used for the problem representation and user interface. Because of the emphasis on parallel computation and application of stochastic global search methods, the approach is expected to have a high probability of finding near optimal solutions for medium to large problem sizes which are typically encountered in practice.