No-wait Task Assignment in Flexible Manufacturing Cells

Abstract

The problem of task assignment for a class of flexible manufacturing cells is considered. The cell is designed for cyclic production of one product. The product is characterized by a sequence of operations of given length and each requiring a robot: the problem is therefore to allocate the operations to the robots in order to maximize the throughput. The problem of finding a task assignment such that the parts are never in a waiting state is discussed. Notice that, if such assignment exists, the maximum theoretical throughput is achieved. The complexity of the problem for some structures of the system by means of graph-theoretical models.