Identical part production in cyclic robotic cells: Concepts, overview and open questions

Robotic cells consist of a flow-shop with a robot for material handling. A single part is to be produced cyclically and the objective is to minimize production rate. This document introduces basic concepts and tools for dealing with cyclic production. In particular, it concentrates on k-cycies which are production cycles where exactly k parts enter and leave the cell. One defines the cycle function X which is the smallest Value of k so that the set of all k-cycles up to size X contains an optimal cycle for all instances. Known results and conjectures on these functions are given for the classical case where parts can remain oil the machine waiting for the robot and for the no-wait case where parts have to be removed from the machine as soon as their processing is finished. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.