Hybrid flow shop scheduling with robotic processing and AGV-based transportation system

This research, considers a flow shop manufacture line which has unrelated parallel machines at each stage. Machines numerically can vary in each stage and all machines are not able to process all parts. Each part must be assigned only to one machine in each stage and parts should not be waiting at machines (no buffer). Materials loading, transportation, unloading and packing are done by robots. In other words, transportation is done by Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) and all tasks of parts (loading, unloading, packing and setup) on machines are done by Robotic Adaptive Grippers. It is not obligatory for one kind of parts to be processed on one machine. In other words, parts can be divided into parts families (Lot Split). The main contribution of this study is devising a mixed integer linear model which will be examined in an examples using GAMS software.

Keywords:

Hybrid Flow Shop , Parallel Unrelated Machines , Robotic Transportation , Lot Split , Makespan , Integer Linear Model , Automated Guided Vehicles , Entrance Tardiness , Exit Tardiness , Robotic Adaptive Grippers