Optimal location of workstations in tandem automated-guided vehicle systems

The way workstations are located in a tandem automated-guided vehicle (AGV) systems affect the total lateness of the system. So far, almost all studies have focused on either minimizing the total flow or minimizing the total AGV transitions in each zone. This study presented a novel approach to locate the workstations in a tandem AGV zones by developing a new mixed-integer programming (MIP) formulation. The objective is to minimize total waiting time of all workstations which is equivalent to minimizing the total lateness of each zone. Lateness is defined as the total idle time of a workstation waiting to be supplied by an AGV. The proposed MIP formulation is very competitive and has the capability to solve instances of up to 25 workstations to optimality in a reasonable amount of time