AGV schedule integrated with production in flexible manufacturing systems

摘要

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) comprise, automated machine tools, automated materialhandling, and automated storage and automated retrieval systems (AS/RS) as essential components.Effective sequencing and scheduling of the material handling systems (MHS) can have a major impacton the productivity of the manufacturing system. The material handling cannot be neglected whilescheduling the production tasks. It is necessary to take into account the interaction between machines,material handling systems and computer. ln this context, this paper attempts to link the operation ofautomated guided vehicles (AGV) with the production schedule and suggests a heuristic algorithmthat employs vehicle dispatching rules (vdr) for conflict resolution. The vdrs considered in this paperare: shortest operation time (SPT), longest operation time (LPT), longest travel time (LTT) andshortest travel time (STT). The performance of the vdrs in the proposed heuristic is compared withmakespan criteria. The results show that the STI, provides the best solutions compared to other vdrs.