A niched genetic algorithm to solve a pollutant emission reduction problem in the manufacturing industry: A case study

A multiobjective optimization approach to deal with a pollutant emission reduction problem in the manufacturing industry, through implementation of the best available technical options, is presented in this paper. More specifically, attention is focused on the industrial painting of wood and the problem under investigation is formulated as a bicriteria combinatorial optimization problem. A niched Pareto genetic algorithm based approach is used to determine sets of methods, tools and technologies, applicable both in the design and in the production phase, allowing to simultaneously minimize the total cost and maximize the total pollutant emission reduction.