Development of Parts Sequencing Rule in a Two-machine Robotic Cell

This paper suggests a new heuristic to improve robotic cells efficiency with a finite buffer. An efficient heuristic for parts sequencing with this configuration is developed. Analyzing robot\\`s movements and defining the events for the completion times of robot\\`s segmental activities enable us to develop a mathematical model that can be used to estimate, the completion time in the robotic cell. The robotic cell is consisting of two computer numerical control machines and a finite buffer to manufacture multiple parts. The developed heuristic can be used to estimate an optimum or near optimum parts sequences for this configuration. Numerical examples are followed to show the validity of the heuristic.