A hormone regulation–based approach for distributed and on-line scheduling of machines and automated guided vehicles. (January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zheng, Kun; Tang, Dunbing; Giret, Adriana; Salido, Miguel A; Sang, Zelei
• Is Part Of: Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Volume 232:Number 1(2018)
• Page Start: 99
• Page End: 113
• Publication Date: 2018-01
• Subjects: Manufacturing system -- automated guided vehicle -- hormone-regulation mechanism -- on-line scheduling -- allocation mechanism; Mechanical engineering -- Periodicals; Engineering -- Management -- Periodicals; Manufacturing processes -- Periodicals; 629.8
• DOI: 10.1177/0954405416662078
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0954-4054

Abstract

With the continuous innovation of technology, automated guided vehicles are playing an increasingly important role on manufacturing systems. Both the scheduling of operations on machines as well as the scheduling of automated guided vehicles are essential factors contributing to the efficiency of the overall manufacturing systems. In this article, a hormone regulation–based approach for on-line scheduling of machines and automated guided vehicles within a distributed system is proposed. In a real-time environment, the proposed approach assigns emergent tasks and generates feasible schedules implementing a task allocation approach based on hormonal regulation mechanism. This approach is tested on two scheduling problems in literatures. The results from the evaluation show that the proposed approach improves the scheduling quality compared with state-of-the-art on-line and off-line approaches.