Adapting Ant Colony Optimization to a Real Machine Layout Problem (original) (raw)

ANT COLONY OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM FOR FACILITY LAYOUT PROBLEM ALGORITMO DE OPTIMIZACIÓN DE COLONIAS DE HORMIGAS PARA EL PROBLEMA

This paper is the result of a research on the applications of bio-inspired algorithms in the field of production engineering in the District University Francisco José de Caldas, covering the topics of operations research, industrial layout distribution in manufacturing plant among others. It is intended to seek optimization problems of these fields, using artificial intelligence of swarms from the implementation of an ant colony optimization algorithm (Ant Colony Optimization-ACO) as metaheuristic planning tool and optimization of layout problem. It plans, with the goal of finding the best spatial allocation of work stations or cells. Theoretical concepts explored and results are presented. First, a state of the art review on the subject made, then the possible solution algorithms were evaluated to identify the objective function to optimize, to finally apply the ACO algorithm, and evaluate the results of performance against the Initial configuration as the plant. Resumen: Este artículo es resultado de un trabajo de investigación sobre las aplicaciones de algoritmos bioinspirados e inteligentes en el ámbito de ingeniería en producción, en la Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, abarcando las temáticas de investigación de operaciones, distribución en planta industrial de manufactura entre otros. Se pretende buscar la optimización a problemas propios de esos campos, aplicando inteligencia artificial de enjambres, a partir de la implementación de un algoritmo de Optimización de Colonias de Hormigas (Ant Colony Optimization-ACO) como herramienta metaheurística de planificación y optimización del problema de distribución en planta, con el objetivo de buscar la mejor asignación espacial de estaciones o celdas de trabajo. Se presentan los conceptos teóricos explorados y los resultados obtenidos. En primer lugar se efectuó la revisión de estado del arte sobre la temática, luego se evaluaron los posibles algoritmos de solución, para identificar la función objetivo a optimizar, para finalmente aplicar el algoritmo ACO, y evaluar los resultados de desempeño del mismo frente a la configuración inicial que tenía la planta. Palabras clave: Metaheurísticas, Optimización combinacional, Optimización con colonias de hormigas, Problema de distribución en planta.

Ant Colony Optimization

A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

Ants exhibit complex social behaviors that have long since attracted the attention of human beings. Probably one of the most noticeable behaviors visible to us is the formation of so-called ant streets. When we were young, several of us may have stepped on such an ant highway or may have placed some obstacle in its way just to see how the ants would react to such disturbances. We may have also wondered where these ant highways lead to or even how they are formed. This type of question may become less urgent for most of us as we grow older and go to university, studying other subjects like computer science, mathematics, and so on. However, there are a considerable number of researchers, mainly biologists, who study the behavior of ants in detail.

“Ant colony algorithm for near-optimal arrangement of linear machine layout”

Ant Colony System (ACS) is a meta-heuristic methodology, inspired by the behaviour of natural ants, which has already been applied to a numerous combinatorial problems. Flexible Manufacturing Systems cope with multi-product, usually small sized production. In this research work we investigate and apply an Ant Colony Optimization algorithm, which arranges the machines of a production line so that to minimize the total amount of backward flows. The experimental results show that a near optimal solution can be found exploiting only a small portion of the feasible solution space. Thus, the proposed algorithm indicates that it is a promising method, which can be applied to complex shop floor configuration for a generalised layout.

A General Ant Colony Model to Solve Combinatorial Optimization Problems

Revista Comlombiana …, 2001

An Ants System is an artificial system based on the behavior of real ant colonies, which is used to solve combinatorial problems. This is a distributed algorithm composed by a set of cooperating agents called ants which cooperate among them to find good solutions to ...