Scheduling of automated guided vehicles in a FMS Environment using particle swarm optimization

Abstract

Efficiency in management of the material handling system plays an important role in planning and operation of a flexible manufacturing system. Many researchers have addressed material handling and vehicle scheduling as two
different problems. The following work focuses on cheduling of both machines and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). We have made an attempt to consider the scheduling of machines and
vehicles in an integrated manner. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is one of the efficient algorithms that aims to converge and give optimal solution in shorter time. Therefore we have considered PSO for such scheduling.