A Multi-Fidelity Model Approach for Simultaneous Scheduling of Machines and Vehicles in Flexible Manufacturing Systems.

Driven by sensor technologies and Internet of Things, massive real-time data from highly interconnected devices are available, which enables the improvement of decision-making quality. Scheduling of such production systems can be challenging as it must incorporate the latest data and be able to re-plan quickly. In this research, a multi-fidelity model for simultaneous scheduling problem of machines and vehicles at flexible manufacturing system has been proposed. In order to improve the computational efficiency, we extend the framework, called multi-fidelity optimization with ordinal transformation and optimal sampling, with combining with the K-means method. The proposed framework enables the benefits of both fast and inexpensive low-fidelity models with accurate but more expensive high-fidelity models. Results show that this approach can significantly decrease computational cost compared with other algorithms in the literature.