Scheduling and control of manufacturing systems with critical material handling
Abstract
During the last three decades, manufacturing systems have evolved from mass producing systems to low volume and highly flexible production systems. This evolution of the manufacturing systems has forced a change on the material handling systems. Today, material handling systems are more automated and are designed to offer the adaptability needed for low volume highly flexible manufacturing systems. Material handling system is a critical link between the various subsystems of a production system. An inadequate material handling system can make a flexible system become quite inflexible. However, the material handling aspect of manufacturing systems planning has been typically ignored. The popularity of Automated Guided Vehicle Systems (AGVS) is forcing the researchers to pay more attention to the material handling system's interaction with the machining centers and the way that they influence the shop performance. When a capacitated AGV system is used, then it is possible for the material handling system to become the bottleneck station. Because there are many factors which can effect the efficiency of an AGV system. Using a simplistic assumption about the transportation time could result in an infeasible or inefficient schedule for the shop. Material handling systems such as AGVS have to be explicitly addressed in real-time production scheduling decisions. The purpose of this research is to develop a prototype control architecture and scheduling strategy for manufacturing systems which use Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs). The resource allocation, vehicle routing, vehicle scheduling and dispatching decisions will be performed in real-time. Integration issues are addressed in order to show the need for autonomous low-level controllers. The proposed control strategy will take advantage of the flexibility that the AGVs have to offer to the production system.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Tanchoco, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Industrial engineering|Systems design
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