Increasing Throughput for a Class of Two-Machine Robotic Cells Served by a Multifunction Robot

The multifunction robotic cell scheduling problem has been recently studied in the literature. The main assumption in the pertaining literature is that a multifunction robot performs an operation on the part during any loaded move between two adjacent processing stages. For a two-machine cell, these stages are the input hopper, the first machine, the second machine and the output hopper. Consequently, the multifunction robot performs three operations with fixed processing times. In contrast, we assume a class of two-machine cells where none of the processing times of three operations are fixed. However, their summation is fixed and equivalent to the processing time of the unique operation. The processing mode of the unique operation performed by the multifunction robot is stop resume. Thus, regardless of the gap interrupts during operations by two machines, the robot continues performing the unique operation of the part when it is reloaded to the robot without any loss of time. The focus lies on n-unit cycles due to their popularity. It is proven one-unit cycles have better performance for the problem under study. The cycle time of one-unit cycles are obtained and optimality conditions are determined for different pickup criteria: free, interval, and no-wait. Note to Practitioners-Scheduling and modeling of robotic cells are absolutely essential for manufacturers who seek methods to increase the productivity of their robotized production systems. The maximum improvement in productivity level of cells is also of interest to leading robotic cell designers. This improvement can be even more significant for cells which use advanced robots such as multifunction ones. In more detail, multifunction robotic cells are extensively used in the inspection of many automotive products including crankshaft, gears and lifters in transit. Here, some practice scheduling problems addressing multifunction robots with stop resume processing modes are identified, and then the optimality conditions are determined for these problems. Using the results in this paper, production managers are able to develop a methodology for scheduling of multifunction robotic cells bought by their companies.