Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for the Group Technology Economic Lot Scheduling Problem

Hee Chul Bae

The Economic Lot Scheduling Problem (ELSP) is an important production scheduling problem that has been intensively studied over 40 years. Numerous heuristic algorithms have been developed since the problem is NP-hard. The concept of group technology has been successfully applied to many production systems including flexible manufacturing systems. In this paper we apply group technology principles to the economic lot scheduling problem. We obtain a production schedule of several family products on a single facility where setup times and costs can be reduced by using the concept of group technology. We develop a heuristic algorithm and a hybrid genetic algorithm for the group technology economic lot scheduling problem (GT-ELSP). Numerical experiments show that the developed heuristic and the hybrid genetic algorithm outperform the existing heuristics.