An inter-cell scheduling approach considering flexibleprocessing routes

Aiming at the problem of scheduling in cellular manufacturing system (CMS) with exceptional parts that need to visit machines located at multiple job shop cells, a pheromone-based approach (PBA) is proposed in this paper. Multi-agents are used to develop the model of CMS. Redundant cells are defined and redundant paths are taken out from the flexible processing routes. Besides, agent coalitions are established to reduce communication cost and to make the solution more global. Simulation results show that compared to the common scheduling rules and their combination, the proposed approach has significant advantages in five performances.