Markovian Reliability in Multiple AGV System

Traditional manufacturing has relied on dedicated mass-production systems to achieve high production volumes at low costs. As living standards improve and the demands for new consumer goods rise, manufacturing flexibility gains prominence as a strategic tool for rapidly changing markets. Flexibility, however, cannot be properly incorporated in the decision-making process if it is not well defined and measured in a quantitative manner. Flexibility in its most rudimentary sense is the ability of a manufacturing system to respond to changes and uncertainties associated with the production process (Miettinen et al., 2010; Kumar & Sridharan, 2009; Das et al., 2009). A comprehensive classification of eight flexibility types was proposed in Browne et al. (1984). Automated Guided Vehicle System (AGVS) becomes popular in many industrial fields because of its flexibility, reliability, safety, and contribution to the increase of productivity and to the improvement of housekeeping. But, the performance of the material handling system is significantly influenced by several operating policies. Since the manufacturing systems experience different failure states, therefore considering these states in modeling a reliability problem is of importance. The best way for considering system states in modeling is to employ Markovian property. Reibman (1990) stated the problem in estimating the probability of failure in different state is vital for reliability computations. The increasing demand for the reliability assessment in manufacturing systems under several random parameters has been investigated by several approaches facilitating the computations of probability estimations. As a significant merit for availability of an automated material handling system, studying on the reliability of the system is effective. The importance rises while several devices configure a multiple handling system. State transition in FMS is substantially effective on reliability computations. Therefore this research helps readers to find out more about different aspects of reliability computations in various manufacturing system configurations including machines and AGVs.