Cyclic scheduling in robotic flowshops

Fully automated production cells consisting of flexible machines and a mate rial handling robot have become commonplace in contemporary manufacturing s ystems. Much research on scheduling problems arising in such cells, in part icular in flowshop-like production cells, has been reported recently. Altho ugh there are many differences between the models, they all explicitly inco rporate the interaction between the materials handling and the classical jo b processing decisions, since this interaction determines the efficiency of the cell. This paper surveys cyclic scheduling problems in robotic flowsho ps, models for such problems, and the complexity of solving these problems, thereby bringing together several streams of research that have by and lar ge ignored one another, and describing and establishing links with other sc heduling problems and combinatorial topics.