Material handling robots fleet size optimization by a heuristic

Abstract

The application of material handling robots (MHRs) has been commonly observed in flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) for efficient material handling activities. In order to gain maximum throughput, minimum tardiness from the minimum investment of funds for the material handling activities, it is important to determine the optimum numbers of MHRs required for efficient production of jobs in the FMS. In the present work, the requirement of MHRs is optimized for different FMS layouts by using a heuristic procedure. Initially, a mathematical model is proposed to identify the MHRs requirement to perform the material handling activities in the FMS, later on, the model is optimized by simulating a novel heuristic procedure to find the required optimum number of MHRs in the FMS. The proposed methodology is found to be generic enough and can also be applied in various industries employing the MHRs.