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Intelligent Scheduling in Food Production/ Processing Facilities through

Neural Augmented Ant Colony Optimization (NaACO) Technique

Article  in  Mitteilungen Klosterneuburg · July 2014

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Intelligent Scheduling in Food Production/Processing Facilities through

Neural Augmented Ant Colony Optimization (NaACO) Technique

Muhammad Umer1, Dr. Riaz Ahmad2, Dr.Amir Farhan3.

School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (SMME), National University of

Science and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan.

Correspondence e-mail: Muhammad.umer@smme.nust.edu.pk1

Abstract—In this paper we introduce and present an optimization technique for gaining
efficiency and proficiency in food production and processing industry. This technique is
an interface of Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs)
and thus is named as NaACO (Neural Augmented Ant Colony Optimization). In essence
the formulation and implementation of Neural Augmented Ant Colony Optimization
(NaACO) has already been established in our previous research and publications but this
paper presents a novelty in which this technique has been applied in the area of food
processing and packing industry for the first time. The concept has been discussed
through a case study of a local food processing/production plant of Pakistan where
efficiency in processing and packing are of dire interest with the increasing demand and
seasonal fluctuations.

Keywords—Food production, Neural Augmented Ant Colony Optimization (NaACO);

Artificial Neural Networks (ANN).

Literature Review
The concept of Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) meta- heuristic is to converge to an
optimal and idealized solution in the minimum of times. It is a key technique to gain
efficiency in scheduling and operations. The function of evaporation or reinforcement
within this technique are kept in order to restrain the meta heuristic into falling into local
optima and the technique itself is explained in detail by Marco Dorigo and Thomas
Stutzle [1] in their pioneering research on ant colonies and its mathematical formulation.
The formulation of ACO envisages the concept of food finding behavior of ants in which
they converge to the shortest path and rest of the ants follow suit by sensing a depositing
material called Pheromone. Mathematically for artificial ants, the probability that any
arbitrary ant will follow a particular path is given by:

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𝑘 [𝜏𝑖𝑗 ]𝛼 [𝜂𝑖𝑗 ]𝛽
𝑝𝑖𝑗 = ; if j ∈ 𝑁𝑖𝑘 , (1)
∑ [𝜏𝑖𝑙 ]𝛼 [𝜂𝑖𝑙 ]𝛽
𝑙 ∈𝑁𝑘
𝑖

In this equation 𝜂𝑖𝑗 is the triggering heuristic for any problem when ants have to travel
from point I to j. Moreover 𝜏𝑖𝑗 is the up gradation function which prepares the heuristic
to recheck the results. This is called Pheromone evaporation function and is depicted as:

𝜏𝑖𝑗 ← (1 − 𝜌)𝜏𝑖𝑗 (2)

Where ρ is a parameter ranging from 0 to 1. There are various parameters which are
being set to ascertain the best values for the variables in equation (1) and (2). As per
Dorigo and Stutzle table 1 gives us some idea regarding what parameters to set once we
are handling a particular scheduling problem:

Table1: Varying range of ACO parameters

S ACO
𝛼 𝛽 𝜌 M 𝜏𝑜
No Variant

1 AS 1 2 𝑡𝑜 5 0.5 N 𝑚/𝐶 𝑛𝑛

2 EAS 1 2 𝑡𝑜 5 0.5 N (𝑒 + 𝑚)/𝜌𝐶 𝑛𝑛

3 ASrank 1 2 𝑡𝑜 5 0.1 N 0.5𝑟(𝑟 − 1)/𝜌𝐶 𝑛𝑛

4 MMAS 1 2 𝑡𝑜 5 0.02 N 1/𝜌𝐶 𝑛𝑛

5 ACS - 2 𝑡𝑜 5 0.1 10 1/𝑛𝐶 𝑛𝑛

Where m denotes the number of ants and n denotes the number of cities to be visited. The
ACO technique is widely applied in scheduling problems to formulate an optimal
solution. This formulation ensures that the most suitable resources in most efficient of
manners are utilized to carry out a particular task. As such the food manufacturing
industry is under a lot of stress and load not only to maintain the highest standards of
quality throughout their manufacturing processes but also to deliver the consignments on
time as per the demands of the customer. In the competitive business world, the time
delayed is equivalent to the customer lost, and if this happens then competitors make it
much difficult to regain the credentials. Figure 1 shows some of the potential resources
to find related ACO application areas.

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Figure 1: Resources for ACO

The capability of the existing technique of ACO can be further enhanced to cater for the
flexibility and changing situations if an intelligent interface is built into the contemporary
meta heuristic. This capability is introduced through modification in the conventional τ
through the introduction of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) in the corrective loop
while implementing ACO. Hence we have already introduced NaACO to cater for
intelligent scheduling problems [2]. If we look at the previous efforts, NP-complete
nature of potential problems were the most difficult to be solved [3]. Within the
operations research domain Branch and Bound algorithms were the first set of potential
solutions presented to tackle such problems. In addition to this technique various other
techniques such as dynamic programming, integer linear programming were also adapted
to give a reasonable and accurate solution to NP-hard problems. The heuristic or Rule of
Thumb method was adopted by Mathirajan et al. [4] to come up with a suitable solution
of a complex scheduling environment. Within this domain of the introduction of
heuristics various swarm intelligence techniques were introduced to come up with the
most efficient and effective approaches. The ACO meta-heuristic has been used with
ANN previously [5]. This technique due to its fast convergence rate was widely adapted
by the travelling salesman category (TSP) of scheduling situations. In 1992, the very first
algorithm was presented by Dorigo [6]. After the initial acceptance various variants were
introduced such as Ant System (AS), MIN-MAX ant systems ATNS-OAP etc. In

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response to the single tardiness problems, ACO has proven its worth to be more efficient
than its counterparts [7]. In addition to scheduling of rigid assembly lines ACO was also
implemented in flow shop scheduling [8]. Realistically an assembly line is always a
resource constrained mechanism as requires the optimum utilization of resources which
was handled through ACO by Merkle et al. [9]. In generation of a scheduling system
ACO has been successfully applied in flexible job shop environments [10]. Table 2 shows
the application summary of ACO as regards to scheduling problems.

Table 2: Application of ACO in scheduling

Neural networks have an inherent capability of learning through constant exposure

to inputs and outputs. Secondly, ANNs are combined with a resource constrained problem
to formulate an intelligent way to tackle optimization problems. This capability makes
them suitable to be utilized with a very efficient convergence meta-heuristic such as ACO
and to formulate a hybrid strategy in which we can utilize the advantages of ACO (i.e.
fast convergence rate) with the positives of ANN (learning the solution and giving an
intelligent response). This formulation paves the path to decide upon a
combitorial/intelligent approach which can enhance the efficiency of scheduling jobs in
the food production industry where efficiency and on time delivery is of paramount
importance.
Thus the introduction of “Intelligent scheduling” formulates a user friendly approach
which takes into account the ground realities of the workshop floor and gives its results
in response to the optimally suited course of action. The formulation of this approach is

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explained in the following section with the help of a real time case study being conducted
in the food processing sector of Pakistan. The results have been complied and the
inferences have also been drawn after implementation of NaACO to cater for job splitting
or redundancy creation and handling.

Problem Formulation
Food production and manufacturing industry in Pakistan has become one of the
entrepreneurial activities which is generating jobs and livelihood for millions of people.
Moreover this industry is also catering for the growing demand of processed and semi
processed food and consumables for a growing number of customers. The industry is not
technology intensive by nature but the growing requirements have forced the local
businessmen to look towards intelligent solutions. The demand pattern is both seasonal
and thus this industry is faced with high demand vs supply ratios. This in effect puts a lot
of pressure on the manufacturing lines itself. In most of the situations the assembly lines
or the food production lines are over loaded.
The problem with the food industry of Pakistan is that most often the industry is under
immense pressure to deliver regardless of the constraints. The most evident constraint is
the power shortages and abrupt power supply to the local industry. This shortage thus
puts pressure on the factories to be more efficient and productive as the demand on the
other side remains the same as it was before. This aspect alone makes scheduling and
optimization in food manufacturing sector a vital and potent subject. So far very little
effort has been done to scientifically handle this problem and come up with intelligent
solutions which are implementable. Moreover the workforce and the management
involved in the food processing business requires to be put wise on the aspect of
intelligent scheduling so that they can avoid bottlenecks and choking of the
manufacturing lines.
Another concern for the local industry is to balance the supply and demand gap. If the
gap becomes more then the local consumer is not interested in repurchasing of the same
item in future due to the alternates available and due to lack of trust in the product. As of
now more and more multi nationals are joining the local competition and thus are making
the local market more competitive. This is discouraging the small to medium producer to
keep up with the volume of production and the efficiency of production lines. This
problem of increasing competition and entrance of big players in the food manufacturing
market is thus highlighting the need for giving a clear understanding of the options and
techniques available to optimize and stream line the factory processes.
We have taken such a case of an over loaded food production line, in which we want to
firstly optimize the resources by efficient allocation and then through NaACO we want
to develop a mechanism of assembly line splitting to stream line the workshop flows and
for better house keepings. In figure 2 we depict the generic flow chart of this food
production plant where noodles were being manufactured and packed:

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Figure 2: Noodles manufacturing process

The present workshop layout for the above mentioned process is shown in figure 3.
Figure 3: Present layout of the facility

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The encircled area shows the potential bottleneck and the area in which we can apply
NaACO to come up with the potential assembly line splitting scenario. In essence the
present situation within the encircled cluster looks as in figure 4. The current situation of
assembly lines indicates the potential area in which we can apply our In peak season the
assembly lines are overloaded and choked due to high WIP (work in process) inventory
levels and due to bad workshop layouts.
Figure 4: Layout within the cluster.
AIR DRYING 1

AIR DRYING 3
AIR DRYING 3
EXTRUSION 2
EXTRUSION1

COOKING 2

COOKING 3
COOKING1

As depicted the three processes i.e. cooking, extrusion and air drying were jumbled up in
a non-sequential manner. In order to give a sequence following problem formulation was
done:
In accordance with the given conditions, n jobs and w workers are scheduled to m parallel
stations:
a) Every job has one station
b) The jobs remain intact on a given station till they are completed
c) Every job has its own given processing time

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d) The objective is to minimize the process time and then look for a parallel layout.

e) We have neglected the set up times of stations.

f) No station can process more than one job at a time.
g) In addition to our job allocation we also have to allocate a group of W workers on
the stations according to the workload.

In order to be ascertain about the As-Is situation we note the timings of jobs once they
are entering the cluster and once they are leaving the cluster as shown in table 3. We then
formulate NaACO through a stepwise procedure as discussed in the following lines.

Table 3: Cluster timings for jobs entering and leaving the cluster.

Step 1

With this information we were able to intervene with in the cluster in order to note the
individual timings a job spends on each station. With this initial working we were able to
apply ACO to designate the jobs entering the cluster to different stations in the most
efficient manner as shown in figure 5.

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Figure 5: Application of ACO

The results were as follows:

Machines Assigned;
Machine_1 =
6 9
Machine_2 =
7 10 11 12
Machine_3 =
1 2 3 4 5 8
Workforce Assigned
M_1 = 2
M_2 = 3
M_3 = 5
Total time:
469.2104 (seconds); approx. = 7.8 minutes

This shows that the total time can be reduced within the cluster. This assignment also
depicts that we can formulate a parallel processing system within the cluster to provide a
better flow to our processes as it is being done in figure 6.

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Figure 6: Improved Layout

Step 2.

In order to provide an intelligent end to ACO for worker assignment and for
determining the maximum work a particular station can handle, we formulate NaACO
through training of the system with inputs provided in step 1 vis-à-vis the outputs i.e. the
minimum times along with an additional dimension of workforce requirement. The
training is done through supervised training methodology of ANNs as mentioned in figure
7.

Figure 7: ANN Training

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Step 3.

As a result of this training a combitorial dialogue box is generated which can optimize
the inputs and tell us about the overall fitness of the different parameters with respect to
the model boundaries. The answer is a YES or a NO to guide us regarding the maximum
bounds of our scheduling operations.

Figure 8: NaACO Dialogue box.

Areas of Future Research.

It is recommended that this model may be implemented in other food production plants
and food processing facilities so that the overall robustness of the model can be checked
and verified. Moreover, we can also incorporate sensitivity analysis of the ACO meta-
heuristic to define the upper and lower bounds of the proposed models.

Conclusion

The essence of this paper is to demonstrate the capability of NaACO in the field of food
production and related industry. Although this technique is taken as a pure meta-heuristic
technique comparable to hard core scheduling environments, but due to impeding nature
and demand provisioning of food industry in countries like Pakistan , this technique can
prove helpful in deciding various loading capacities and work force assignments within
this industry.

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REFERENCES
[1] M. Dorigo and S. Thomas, “Ant Colony Optimization.” London: The MIT press, 2004.

[2] M. Umer, Dr. R. Ahmad, Dr. I. Chaudhry (2013), “Unsupervised Artificial Neural
Networks (ANNs) For Intelligent Pheromone up Gradation. Further Evolution of
Neural Augmented Ant Colony Optimization (NaACO),” Life Science 10 ed. vol. 3,
2013, pp. 318-327.

[3] M. R. Garey and D. S. Johson, Computer and Intractability: A Guide to the theory of
NP-Completeness, 1979.

[4] M. Mathirajan, V. Chandru, A. I. Sivakumar, “Heuristic algorithms for scheduling heat-

treatment furnaces of steel casting industries.” Sādhanā 32ed. vol. 5, 2007, pp. 479-500

[5] Irani, R., and Nasimi, R. (2012). An Evolving Neural Network Using an Ant Colony
Algorithm for a Permeability Estimation of the Reservoir. Pet. Sci. Technol. 30, 375–
384.

[6] M. Dorigo, “Optimization, Learning and Natural Algorithms.” PhD thesis, Politecnico
di Milano, Dipartimento di Eletronica, Milan. 1992.

[7] M. L den Besten, T. Stutzle, and M. Dorigo, “Ant colony optimization for the total
weighted tardiness problem,” in Proc. of PPSN-VI, Sixth International Conference on
Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, Berlin: Springer-Verlag. 2000, pp. 611-620.

[8] C. Rajendra, and H. Ziegler, “Ant-colony algorithms for permutation flow shop
scheduling to minimize make span/total flow time of jobs.” European journal of
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[9] D. Merkle, M. Midderdorf, and H. Schmeck, “Ant colony optimization for resource-
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[10] Andrea Rossi, G.D. (2007). Flexible job-shop scheduling with routing flexibility and
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