Using Simulated Annealing for Flexible Robotic Cell Scheduling

Abstract

We focus on the scheduling problem arising in two-machine robotic cells in which sets of multiple part-types are produced. Completion time of the production depends on the robot moves as well as the part assignments and processing times of the parts. We try to find the robot move sequence, the part sequence and the allocated processing times of the parts on each machine that jointly minimize the makespan. A simulated annealing based algorithm is proposed in order to solve the problem of determining the best schedule in a two-machine cell. Experimental results show that this approach works well and can be extended for further cases.