Integrated scheduling of flexible manufacturing systems employing automated guided vehicles

Centralized and distributed automated guided vehicle system (AGVS) models for materials handling, and the model for part processing are integrated into a single coherent model. This formulation can be used to collectively schedule and control the entire flexible manufacturing system (FMS) as opposed to the traditional separate scheduling of part processing and material handling. The two AGVS models are based on Petri nets and can be directly used in the scheduling method that uses Petri nets for formulation and heuristic search for solution. This method employs a global search to seek the optimal operation of an entire FMS. Scheduling examples are presented and the method compares favorably with the results simulated using heuristic dispatch rules