A survey: Scheduling of Automated Guided Vehicles in Flexible (Re-)Manufacturing Systems

This work gives a state-of-the-art overview regarding the scheduling of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) in Flexible (Re-)Manufacturing Systems (FMS/FRMS). Different, general approaches are available to solve this task. In this regard an overview of currently available fleet management software and research in this field as well as the simultaneous scheduling of machines and AGVs is given. Production scheduling and transport scheduling have been vastly studied by many researchers, but most of the works address these both problems separately. However, these two problems are closely linked and influence each other. By looking at them together, it is possible to achieve an improvement in the overall scheduling. The different works are examined regarding the consideration of one available machine for each tasks, or if alternative machines are available and if the approaches are static or dynamic. Especially the appropriability of the presented works regarding the use in remanufacturing systems is examined. Remanufacturing is a process for used products to make them “as good as new or better”. Due to unknown condition of the used products many challenges occur during the remanufacturing process which are special to the domain of remanufacturing and not know from manufacturing. The resulting stochastic routing of products and material in particular places special demands on the flexibility and dynamic of the scheduling and control of the remanufacturing system. In order to meet the challenges of a real remanufacturing system, the scheduling algorithm should consider alternative machines as well as be dynamic. None of the approaches examined can meet these requirements, which is why new methods have to be developed.