Scheduling of Multiple Autonomous Guided Vehicles for an Assembly Line using Minimum Cost Network Flow

This paper proposed a parallel automated assembly line system to produce multiple products having multiple autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs). Several assembly lines are configured to produce multiple products in which the technologies of machines are shared among the assembly lines when required. The transportation between the stations in an assembly line (intra-assembly line) and that among stations in different assembly lines (inter assembly line) are performed using AGVs. Scheduling of AGVs to service the assembly lines and the corresponding stations are proposed. In the proposed problem, the assignment of multiple AGVs to different assembly lines and stations is performed using minimum-cost network flow (MCF). It optimizes weighted completion time of tasks for each short-term window by formulating the task and resource assignment problem as MCF problem during each short-term scheduling window. The novelties of the paper are as follows: to configure an autonomous assembly line, to model a minimum cost network flow, and to develop a heuristic solution approach. The results and comparisons show the effectiveness and efficiency of the model and solution algorithm.