• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.125-135
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• 2007

An automated guided vehicle (AGV) system is a group of collaborating unmanned vehicles which is commonly used for transporting materials within manufacturing, warehousing, or distribution systems. The performance of an AGV system depends on the dispatching rules used to assign vehicles to pickup requests, the vehicle routing protocols, and the home location of idle vehicles, which are called dwell points. In manufacturing and distribution environments which emphasize just-in-time principles, performance measures for material handling are based on response times for pickup requests and equipment utilization. In an AGV system, the response time for a pickup request is the time that it takes for the vehicle to travel from its dwell point to the pickup station. In this article, an exact dynamic programming algorithm for selecting dwell points in a tandem-loop multiple-vehicle AGV system is presented. The objective of the model is to minimize the maximum response time for all pickup requests in a given shift. The recursive algorithm considers time restrictions on the availability of vehicles during the shift.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.85-101
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• 1995

Automated Guided Vehicles(AGVs) are widely used in computer integrated manufacturing(CIM) systems for material handling purposes. Although automated guided vehicles provide higher levels of flexibility and computer integrability, the installations are limited in number and one of the critical reasons lies in the complexity involved in the operation. The main objective of this research is to alleviate this problem by proposing efficient integrated operational control methods for AGV-based CIM systems. Particularly, this research is concerned with the mixed problem of dispatching automated guided vehicles and scheduling machines operation. The proposed dynamic heuristic algorithm uses various priority schemes and relevant information concerning the load of the system, the status of queues, and the position of AGVs in the scheduling process. The scheduling decision process is hierarchical in the sense that different decision criteria are applied sequentially to identify the most appropriate part to be served. This algorithm consists of two sections, the section of part selection by AGVs for the next service whenever an AGV completes the current assignment, and the section of part selection by machines for next service whenever a machine completes the current operation. The proposed algorithm has been compared with other scheduling schemes using the performance measure of mean flow-time and mean tardiness. Simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm can reduce the mean flow-time and mean tardiness significantly.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.67-81
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• 1998

An Automated Guided Vehicle System (AGVS) with a unidirectional loop guide path is modeled as a discrete-time stationary Markov chain. It is discussed how to estimate the mean response time, the utilization, and the cycle time of AGV for a delivery order. Three common operation strategies for idle vehicles - central zone positioning rule, circulatory loop positioning rule and point of release positioning rule - are analyzed. These different operation strategies are compared with each other based on the performance measures.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.70-74
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• 2018

In order to ensure the flow of goods available and more flexible, reduce labor costs, many factories and industrial zones around the world are gradually moving to use automated solutions. One of them is to use Automated guided vehicles (AGV). Currently, there are a line tracing method as an AGV operating method, and a method of estimating the current position of the AGV and matching with a factory map and knowing the moving direction of the AGV. In this paper, we propose ceiling Light and guided line based moving direction estimation algorithm using multi-camera on the AGV in smart factory that can operate stable AGV by compensating the disadvantages of existing AGV operation method. The proposed algorithm is able to estimate its position and direction using a general - purpose camera instead of a sensor. Based on this, it can correct its movement error and estimate its own movement path.

• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.47-67
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• 2000

It is discussed how to assign delivery tasks to automated guided vehicles (AGVs) for multiple container cranes in automated container terminals. The primary goal of dispatching AGVs is to complete all the lading and discharging operations as early as possible, and the secondary goal is to minimize the total travel distance of AGVs. It is assumed that AGVs are not dedicated to a specific container crane but shared among multiple cranes. A mathematical formulation is developed and a heuristic algorithm is suggested to obtain a near optimal solution with a reasonable amount of computational time. The single-cycle and the dual-cycle operations in both the seaside and the landside operations are analyzed. The effects of pooling AGVs for multiple container cranes on the performance of an entire AGV system are also analyze through a numerical experiment.

• IE interfaces
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.37-45
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• 1989

Guide path design is the most important factor in planning automated guided vehicle systems(AGVS) in manufacturing shop environments. This paper studies a heuristic procedure to design an optimal bi-directional guide path with the objective of the minimum total travel time of the vehicles. An example is solved to validate the procedure developed.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Simulation Conference
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• 1997.04a
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• pp.124-127
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• 1997

A key element in the control of Automated Guided Vehicle Systems (AGVS) is dispatching policy. This paper proposes a new dispatching algorithm for an efficient operation of AGVS. Based on an evolutionary operation, it has an adaptive control capability responding to changes of the system environment. The performance of the algorithm is compared with some well-known dispatching rules in terms of the system throughput through simulation. Sensitivity analysis is carried out varying the buffer capacity and the number of AGVS.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.22 no.52
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• pp.117-139
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• 1999

This paper is concerned about the hybrid tandem configuration as the design of the automated guided vehicle system(AGVs). The hybrid tandem configuration is that the manufacturing system is divided into several non-overlapping zones, workstations of each zone are linked by network configuration including loop. That is, the manufacturing system is divided into several non-overlapping small size networks, and at most two automated guided vehicles can be available in each network. The transit point is located at proper point between adjacent networks. The parts are transported to workstations in other network through the transit points. One of the objective functions in dividing into the hybrid tandem configuration is to minimize the maximum travel time of the divided networks, and other is to minimize the total travel distance of parts moved to workstations in other networks for the next processing. The model formulation is presented, and a numerical example is shown. Also, the performances of system for the hybrid tandem, tandem and network configuration are compared through the simulation. The results of this research will contribute to the development of material handling systems in the manufacturing system. Also, it will be applied in determining the transportation area of transportation vehicles and the number and size of the transportation fleet in the transportation problem of logistics management.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.17-28
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• 1998

This study suggests a procedure for designing cellular manufacturing systems (CMS) which are combined with automated guided vehicles (AGVs) using a tandem configuration. So far most of the previous studies have dealt with conventional design problems not considering the layout and the characteristics of transporters used in CMS. A mathematical model is developed using the service time to perform material transfers as a suitable meassure. The service capacity of AGVs and space limitations are also reflected in this model. As the model can be shown strongly NP-hard, a heuristic algorithm is presented, in which each cell is temporarily formed using both the set covering model and similarity coefficients, and then locations of the cells are determined by means of tabu search and finally machine perturbations are carried out. An example problem is solved to demonstrate the algorithm developed.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.125-137
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• 2011

Customers are generally requiring a variety of products, earlier due date, and lower price. A manufacturing process needs the efficient scheduling to meet those customer's requirements. This study proposes the novel algorithm named MJA(Minimum Job completion time and AGV time) that increases the performance of machines and AGV(Automated Guided Vehicles) in many kinds of job types. MJA optimizes the bottleneck of machines and efficiency of AGV with considering two types of dispatching at the same time. Suggested algorithm was compared with existing heuristic methods by several simulations, it performed better for reducing the time of tardiness.