Scheduling multiple robots in a no-wait re-entrant robotic flowshop

Ada Che, Michelle Chabrol, Michel Gourgand and Yuan Wang

International Journal of Production Economics, 2012, vol. 135, issue 1, 199-208

Abstract: No-wait re-entrant robotic flowshops are widely used in the electronic industry, such as PCB and semiconductor manufacturing. In such an industry, cyclic production policy is often used due to large lot size and simplicity of implementation. This paper addresses cyclic scheduling of a no-wait re-entrant robotic flowshop with multiple robots for material handling. We formulate the problem and propose a polynomial algorithm to find the minimum number of robots for all feasible cycle times. Consequently, the minimum cycle time for any given number of robots can be obtained with the proposed algorithm. The algorithm runs in O(N5) time in the worst case, where N is the number of machines in the robotic flowshop.

Keywords: Robotic flowshop; Scheduling; No-wait; Polynomial algorithm; Multiple robots (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:proeco:v:135:y:2012:i:1:p:199-208

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2011.07.008

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