Concurrent Scheduling of Machines and AGVs with Alternative Machines in Automobile Manufacturing Using Black Widow Spider Optimization

Automobile manufacturing environments demand high-performance scheduling strategies to synchronize machine operations with material handling systems such as Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs). This paper lays down a formal framework for machines and Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) simultaneous scheduling with alternative machines in a multi machine Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) to produce best optimal sequences for minimization of makespan. This simultaneous scheduling problem is highly complex in nature as it involves selection of machines, job-operations’ sequencing on machines, assignment of AGVs to job-operations and associated trip operations such as AGVs’ dead heading trip and loaded trip times. This paper introduces a nonlinear Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) formulation to model the machines and AGVs combined scheduling with alternate machines and employing a Black Widow Spider Optimization Algorithm (BWOA) based on the hunting behavior of black widow spiders for this simultaneous scheduling. The results have been tabulated, analysed and compared with the results of existing methods.