Scheduling automated transport vehicles for material distribution systems

Abstract

The rise of advanced manufacturing technology has led to enhanced, efficient material handling equipment in manufacturing and container terminal environments. In order to exploit the full potential of advanced material handling equipment in real-world industrial environments, novel scheduling approaches capable of ensuring integrated operations for multiple automated transport vehicles need to be developed. This research develops a methodology for scheduling automated transport vehicles to ensure the smooth flow of materials in production and container terminal environments. The procedure consists of a mixed-integer programming model and two meta-heuristic-based algorithms that are proposed to achieve quality schedules within a reasonable amount of time. The obtained results show a significant reduction in the earliness or lateness of material delivery tasks and an improvement in operational performance, demonstrating that the proposed approaches are capable of ensuring smooth material distribution by scheduling automated transport vehicles in an integrated manner.