Pallet location and job scheduling in a Twin-Robot system

This paper introduces the Twin-Robot Pallet Assignment and Scheduling Problem (TRPASP) in which two robots operating on a rail must be scheduled to pick up and deliver a set of products. The objective is to minimise the makespan, defined as the time taken for the robots to transfer all products from...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers & operations research 2022-11, Vol.147, p.105956, Article 105956
Main Authors: Thomasson, Oliver, Battarra, Maria, Erdoğan, Güneş, Laporte, Gilbert
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Genetic algorithms
Makespan
Metaheuristics
Palletising
Scheduling
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Summary:This paper introduces the Twin-Robot Pallet Assignment and Scheduling Problem (TRPASP) in which two robots operating on a rail must be scheduled to pick up and deliver a set of products. The objective is to minimise the makespan, defined as the time taken for the robots to transfer all products from their pickup locations to their delivery locations, and return to their starting positions. Pickup locations are known a priori, while delivery locations must be assigned to minimise the makespan. The robots must respect a safety distance to avoid collisions. The paper presents a mathematical model for the TRPASP before introducing four heuristic algorithms for solving the problem. Computational experiments demonstrate that the best results are returned by a parallel hybrid metaheuristic. •A scheduling problem with a makespan objective that arises in production is studied.•Production lines are on one side of a rail and pallets of orders on the other.•Two identical robots on the rail move products from the lines to the pallets.•The problem is shown to be NP-Hard, and formulated as an Integer Programming model.•Sequential and parallel metaheuristics are employed to find high quality solutions.
ISSN:0305-0548
1873-765X
DOI:10.1016/j.cor.2022.105956