Mathematical Formulation for Mobile Robot Scheduling Problem in a Manufacturing Cell

This paper deals with the problem of finding optimal feeding sequence in a manufacturing cell with feeders fed by a mobile robot with manipulation arm. The performance criterion is to minimize total traveling time of the robot in a given planning horizon. Besides, the robot has to be scheduled in order to keep production lines within the cell working without any shortage of parts fed from feeders. A mixed-integer programming (MIP) model is developed to find the optimal solution for the problem. In the MIP formulation, a method based on the (s, Q) inventory system is applied to define time windows for multiple-part feeding tasks. A case study is implemented at an impeller production line in a factory to demonstrate the result of the proposed MIP model.