Title: Scheduling of automated guided vehicles and machines in flexible manufacturing systems: a simulation study

Authors: Essam Kaoud; Mahmoud Heshmat; Mahmoud A. El-Sharief; Mohamed G. El-Sebaie

Addresses: Mechanical Engineering Department, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt ' Mechanical Engineering Department, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt ' Mechanical Engineering Department, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt ' Mechanical Engineering Department, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt

Abstract: Flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) have widely expanded in industry sectors all over the world. Scheduling is one of the problems that face the life cycle of FMSs. This paper introduces the simultaneous scheduling problem of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and machines in FMSs. The study is based on discrete event simulation (DES) to solve that problem using benchmark data used by previous studies. The objective of this study is to determine the starting and completion times of each job to minimise the makespan. The results validate the robustness of the simulation model, especially for large-scale problems. Furthermore, they are compared against the other approaches and show consistency.

Keywords: flexible manufacturing system; FMSs; automated guided vehicle; AGVs; scheduling; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2020.107775

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2020 Vol.35 No.3, pp.372 - 387

Received: 04 Mar 2018
Accepted: 19 Dec 2018
Published online: 17 Jun 2020 *

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