A comparison of three search algorithms for solving the buffer allocation problem in reliable production lines

Abstract

This paper investigates the performance of three search algorithms: Myopic Algorithm, Adaptive Tabu Search and Degraded Ceiling to solve the buffer allocation problem in reliable production lines. DECO algorithm is used to calculate throughput. This algorithm is a variant of a decomposition algorithm specifically developed to solve large reliable production lines with parallel machines at each workstation and exponentially distributed service times. The measures of performance used are the CPU time required and closeness to the maximum throughput achieved. The three search algorithms are ranked in respect to these two measures and certain findings regarding their performances over the experimental set are given. © IFAC.