The basic cyclic scheduling model for robotic flow shops

This paper analyzes the productivity of a robotic production cell, functioning under a repetitive robot move cycle. The cell is composed of m machines and one or several robot arms. Identical or different parts are entering the cell during a robot cycle. The problem of cycle time evaluation is shown to be an instance of the basic cyclic scheduling problem. Thus, several powerful results previously developed in the cyclic scheduling context are used to analyze our problem. We propose an O(q m³) algorithm to compute the cycle time. The algorithm is first introduced for one-robot cells and then extended to multi-robot cells. A dynamic programming algorithm is used to find the optimal robot move cycle, that is, the cycle with minimum cycle time. Numerical results highlight the efficiency of cycle time evaluation methods and their potential practical utility in finding the optimal robot move cycle.