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arXiv · 2109.07876

Multi-car paint shop optimization with quantum annealing

Sheir Yarkoni·Alex Alekseyenko·Michael Streif·David Von Dollen·Florian Neukart·Thomas Bäck
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Abstract

We present a generalization of the binary paint shop problem (BPSP) to tackle an automotive industry application, the multi-car paint shop (MCPS) problem. The objective of the optimization is to minimize the number of color switches between cars in a paint shop queue during manufacturing, a known NP-hard problem. We distinguish between different sub-classes of paint shop problems, and show how to formulate the basic MCPS problem as an Ising model. The problem instances used in this study are generated using real-world data from a factory in Wolfsburg, Germany. We compare the performance of the D-Wave 2000Q and Advantage quantum processors to other classical solvers and a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm offered by D-Wave Systems. We observe that the quantum processors are well-suited for smaller problems, and the hybrid algorithm for intermediate sizes. However, we find that the performance of these algorithms quickly approaches that of a simple greedy algorithm in the large size limit.

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Sheir Yarkoni, Alex Alekseyenko, Michael Streif, David Von Dollen, Florian Neukart, Thomas Bäck. 2021-09-16. Multi-car paint shop optimization with quantum annealing. https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.07876

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