Abstract
A flow production system with concurrently executed supply chains providing material handling/transportation services to a given set of workstations is considered. The workstations have to be serviced within preset time windows and can be shared by different supply chains. The transportation and material handling operations supporting the flow of products between the workstations are carried out by a fleet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The batteries on-board the UAVs are replaced at mobile battery swapping stations (MBSs). The focus of this study is a cyclic steady-state flow of products and transportation means, i.e. a state in whose cycle workstations are serviced periodically, within preset time windows, by the same transportation means travelling the same transportation routes. Under this assumption, UAV batteries are swapped at the some locations of battery replacement depots at moments which are multiples of the cycle under consideration. Similar assumptions are made for the fleet of MBSs. To find a solution to the above problem of routing UAV and MBS fleets, one needs to determine the routes travelled by the UAVs servicing the workstations and the routes travelled by the MBSs servicing the battery swapping points, such that the total length of these routes is minimized.
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