Deadlock-free schedules for automated manufacturing workstations

Scheduling automated, unmanned manufacturing systems is significantly different from traditional job shops where human presence is implicitly assumed. Deadlocking has been identified as one of the critical problem in the control of automated manufacturing systems. Past approaches have been myopic in the sense that deadlock avoidance and recovery have been treated as run time problems of the system. In this paper, formulations for deadlock-free schedules are proposed and the importance of considering both material handling and buffer space availability while scheduling such an automated workstation are discussed. Extensions to the basic model and solution methods are also presented