Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Learning Curve Consideration in Makespan Computation Using Artificial Neural Network Approach

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors
Suresh Kumar
A. Arunagiri
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technology, Yanbu Industrial College, Yanbu Al Sinaiyah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Abstract
This paper presents an alternative method using artificial neural network (ANN) to develop a scheduling scheme which is used to determine the makespan or cycle time of a group of jobs going through a series of stages or workstations. The common conventional method uses mathematical programming techniques and presented in Gantt charts forms. The contribution of this paper is in three fold. Firstly, the learning curve which is characterized by a coefficient is considered in the computation work. Secondly, this work is limited to small number of jobs and is useful for project based pilot runs which involve learning. Lastly, the scheduling scheme is developed in ANN as an alternate method. Extensive and successful training using the input and output vector pairs were done to establish the proposed method. Comparison was done for the tested outputs and results produced seem reliable.
Keywords
Learning curve
scheduling
Back Propagation Network
Gantt chart
Subjects
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Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Volume 4, Issue 3 - Serial Number 3
Autumn 2010
Pages 183-192

  • Receive Date 06 August 2009
  • Revise Date 18 October 2009
  • Accept Date 20 March 2010