DYNAMIC SCHEDULING OF AUTOMATED GUIDED VEHICLES FOR A CERTAIN CLASS OF SYSTEMS

Many contemporary manufacturing facilities employ automated guided vehicles (AGVs) for material handling. These vehicles are independently addressable and centrally controlled. In this paper we develop analytical results about the design and operation of certain types of AGV systems and some associated production planning and scheduling problems. Specifically, we analyze the assignment of part types to machines, the sequencing of jobs on each machine, the determination of the AGV fleet size, and the scheduling/dispatching of the AGVs. Given the high capital cost involved in automation, our primary objective is to maximize machine utilization. For a given level of service, we will minimize the AGV travel time. It is shown that by exploiting the special structure exhibited by many systems found in practice, polynomial time algorithms can provide full machine utilization under realistic conditions.