Cyclic production in regular robotic cells: A counterexample to the 1-cycle conjecture

Florence Thiard (1) , Nicolas Catusse (1) , Nadia Brauner (1)

1 G-SCOP_ROSP - Recherche Opérationnelle pour les Systèmes de Production

Robotic cells consist in a flow-shop where transportation of the parts between machines is handled by a robot. We consider cyclic production of identical parts and optimization of the cell's throughput. Production cycle of 1 part are easier to describe implement and there is a conjecture about their dominance. This conjecture has been studied for linear layout cells, for which the 1-cycles are well known, but not for cells with circular layout, where the input and output buffers are at the same position. We provide a counterexample to the conjecture for this case.

Mots clés: scheduling; robotic flow-shop; circular layout; identical parts

Domaines: Recherche opérationnelle [math.OC]

Florence Thiard, Nicolas Catusse, Nadia Brauner. Cyclic production in regular robotic cells: A counterexample to the 1-cycle conjecture. 2014. ⟨hal-01023816v2⟩