Scheduling Single AGV in Blocking Flow-Shop with Identical Jobs

Erik Boom, Erik Boom, Matúš Mihalák, Frank Thuijsman, Mark H. M. Winands

2024

Abstract

We consider a flow-shop with m stations (machines) and n identical jobs that need to be processed on each station. The processing time of every job on station i is p_i. After a job is processed on a station i, it needs to be transported by an automated guided vehicle (AGV) to the next station i+1. There is only one AGV. We assume no buffers, i.e., when the AGV transports a job to a station, the station needs to be empty. Furthermore, an AGV can transport at most one job at a time, non-preemptively, i.e., it cannot leave the job in the middle of transportation. The transportation times between the stations are given and are independent of whether the AGV carries a job or not. We study the problem of scheduling the single AGV such that all jobs are processed and the makespan is minimized. We provide a characterization of feasible schedules, and use it to derive an integer linear program (ILP) for the problem. We observe that solving the ILP requires a rather large amount of computation time even for very small instances. We use the ILP-formulation to design a rolling-window based heuristic that scales up and provides close-to-optimum schedules, as demonstrated by experimental evaluation that also involves comparison to two natural greedy algorithms.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Boom E., Mihalák M., Thuijsman F. and H. M. Winands M. (2024). Scheduling Single AGV in Blocking Flow-Shop with Identical Jobs. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES; ISBN 978-989-758-681-1, SciTePress, pages 325-332. DOI: 10.5220/0012398200003639

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icores24,
author={Erik Boom and Matúš Mihalák and Frank Thuijsman and Mark H. M. Winands},
title={Scheduling Single AGV in Blocking Flow-Shop with Identical Jobs},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES},
year={2024},
pages={325-332},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012398200003639},
isbn={978-989-758-681-1},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES
TI - Scheduling Single AGV in Blocking Flow-Shop with Identical Jobs
SN - 978-989-758-681-1
AU - Boom E.
AU - Mihalák M.
AU - Thuijsman F.
AU - H. M. Winands M.
PY - 2024
SP - 325
EP - 332
DO - 10.5220/0012398200003639
PB - SciTePress