Design of cellular manufacturing systems integrating automated guided vehicles under a tandem configuration

This study suggests a procedure for designing cellular manufacturing systems (CMS) which are combined with automated guided vehicles (AGVs) using a tandem configuration. So far most studies have dealt with conventional design problems and have not considered the layout and the characteristics of transporters used in CMS. A mathematical model is developed using the service time to perform material transfers as a suitable measure. The service capacity of AGVs and space limitations are also reflected in this model. As the problem can be shown strongly NP-hard, a heuristic algorithm is presented, in which each cell is temporarily formed using both the set covering model and similarity coefficients, and then locations of the cells are determined by means of tabu search and finally machine perturbations are carried out. An example problem is solved to demonstrate the algorithm developed.