Integrated Operational Techniques for Robotic Batch Manufacturing Systems

This paper focuses on a batch manufacturing system with multiple industrial robots. Inappropriate coordination of the robots might cause a bottleneck. In addition, a bottleneck is a constraint that dominates the entire system performance, that is, the productivity. Therefore, for an efficient system, these robots are required to operate appropriately while relating to each other. This is a challenge in this study.We propose the following operational techniques: route planning approaches and operation dispatching rules on the basis of task-assignment that will reduce the effect of a bottleneck. Furthermore, reactive cooperation, so that the robots respond to a fluctuating heavy workload caused by the shifting bottleneck, is an essential operational technique. Throughout the simulation experiments, each combination of the operational techniques is examined; finally, the integrated operational techniques are shown.

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