Capacity planning with ant colony optimization for TFT-LCD array manufacturing

Array manufacturing in thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) production network is characterized as a capital-intensive and capacity-constrained production system with re-entrance and batch operations. Effectively using associated machines through optimal capacity planning and order scheduling decisions is a critical issue for array manufacturing. This study develops a capacity planning system (CPS) for TFT-LCD array manufacturing. CPS uses information including master production schedule, order due date, process routing, processing time, and number of machines. In addition, CPS derives the order release time, estimated machine start and finish time, machine allocation, and order completion time to maximize machine workload, improve lateness, and eliminate setup time. This research also develops ant colony optimization (ACO) to seek the optimal order release schedule to maximize a combination of the above objectives. The preliminary experiments are first applied to identify the optimal tuning parameters of the ACO algorithm. Computational experiments are then conducted to evaluate the significance and the robustness of the proposed algorithm compared with other competitive algorithms by full factorial experimental design.

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