Scheduling of Autonomous Robots in the Flexible Manufacturing System

Abstract

Fast adaptability and high flexibility have made use of autonomous robots (ARs) a popular choice for different material transfer activities in the flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs). The ARs are observed to be highly capable and flexible for integration with computer-controlled machine tools, producing different types of jobs in the FMS. The integrated scheduling of production operations on the machine tools and material transfer operations of ARs in the FMS can offer high productivity in the FMS. The present study proposes a procedure for integrated scheduling between jobs under production in the FMS and the ARs in the FMS by using the differential evolution algorithm. The proposed procedure is used for integrated scheduling between the jobs and the ARs so as to minimize the idle time of the machining centers and also minimizing the cost due to the delay in the production simultaneously. It is observed that the proposed scheduling procedure yields efficient results.