Auction-Based Cooperation Mechanism For Cell Part Scheduling With Transportation Capacity Constraint

This paper addresses cell part scheduling (CPS) problem with transportation capacity constraint. In the problem, parts may need to visit different cells, they have to be transferred by automated guided vehicle (AGV). The objective is to minimise the over-all process make-span. An integer nonlinear programming (INLP) model is formulated to allocate the machines, AGVs and schedule all parts. A reasonable transportation mode is presented, and an auction-based heuristic approach is proposed to solve the problem, which focuses on dealing with cooperation between machines and AGVs during processing and transferring parts. The auction consists of two aspects: auction for AGV and auction for machine. In both auctions, AGVs and machines act as auctioneers respectively, and parts act as bidders. A new improved disjunctive graph model is developed to optimise the feasible solutions obtained by auction-based approach. Numerical experiments were conducted to test the auction-based approach and improved disjunctive graph model. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed auction-based approach and improved disjunctive graph model, also indicate influence of the capacity of AGV on scheduling parts.