Concurrent optimal allocation of distributed manufacturing resources using extended Teaching-Learning-Based Optimization

The optimal allocation of distributed manufacturing resources is a challenging task for supply chain deployment in the current competitive and dynamic manufacturing environments, and is characterised by multiple objectives including time, cost, quality and risk that require simultaneous considerations. This paper presents an improved variant of the Teaching-Learning-Based Optimisation (TLBO) algorithm to concurrently evaluate, select and sequence the candidate distributed manufacturing resources allocated to subtasks comprising the supply chain, while dealing with the trade-offs among multiple objectives. Several algorithm-specific improvements are suggested to extend the standard form of TLBO algorithm, which is only well suited for the one-dimensional continuous numerical optimisation problem well, to solve the two-dimensional (i.e. both resource selection and resource sequencing) discrete combinatorial optimisation problem for concurrent allocation of distributed manufacturing resources through a focused trade-off within the constrained set of Pareto optimal solutions. The experimental simulation results showed that the proposed approach can obtain a better manufacturing resource allocation plan than the current standard meta-heuristic algorithms such as Genetic Algorithm, Particle Swarm Optimisation and Harmony Search. Moreover, a near optimal resource allocation plan can be obtained with linear algorithmic complexity as the problem scale increases greatly.