SCHEDULE EFFICIENCY IN A ROBOTIC PRODUCTION CELL

In this paper, we analyze the efficiency of a given robot movement sch edule for the case of a flow shop robotic production cell with m diffe rent machines, one input conveyor, and one output conveyor. We begin w ith the case of one-robot cells and extend our results to multirobot c ells. The paper studies the efficiency of a movement schedule for iden tical parts by defining a movement network associated with this schedu le. This network models any cell layout and applies to multirobot cell s. Using the movement network, we propose two cycle time evaluation me thods, the first using linear programming and the second based on find ing a longest path. The latter method generates a procedure to obtain an analytical formula for the cycle time. We extend the proposed metho ds to study the efficiency of a given input sequence (schedule) for di fferent parts, that is, to determine the sequence processing time. The results obtained here allow us to quickly evaluate the efficiency of any given feasible movement schedule, for identical or different parts .