A Review Of Design And Control Of Automated Guided Vehicle Systems

This paper presents a review on design and control of automated guided vehicle systems. We address most key related issues including guide-path design, estimating the number of vehicles, vehicle scheduling, idle-vehicle positioning, battery management, vehicle routing, and conflict resolution. We discuss and classify important models and results from key publications in literature on automated guided vehicle systems, including often-neglected areas, such as idle-vehicle positioning and battery management. In addition, we propose a decision framework for design and implementation of automated guided vehicle systems, and suggest some fruitful research directions

Sustainable supply chain management in the digitalisation era: The impact of Automated Guided Vehicles

Internationalization of markets and climate change introduce multifaceted challenges for modern supply chain (SC) management in the today's digitalisation era. On the other hand, Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) systems have reached an age of maturity that allows for their utilization towards tackling dynamic market conditions and aligning SC management focus with sustainability considerations. However, extant research only myopically tackles the sustainability potential of AGVs, focusing more on addressing network optimization problems and less on developing integrated and systematic methodological approaches for promoting economic, environmental and social sustainability. To that end, the present study provides a critical taxonomy of key decisions for facilitating the adoption of AGV systems into SC design and planning, as these are mapped on the relevant strategic, tactical and operational levels of the natural hierarchy. We then propose the Sustainable Supply Chain Cube (S2C2), a conceptual tool that integrates sustainable SC management with the proposed hierarchical decision-making framework for AGVs. Market opportunities and the potential of integrating AGVs into a SC context with the use of the S2C2 tool are further discussed

Operational Control of Internal Transport

Operational Control of Internal Transport considers the control of guided vehicles in vehicle-based internal transport systems found in facilities such as warehouses, production plants, distribution centers and transshipment terminals. The author's interest of research having direct use for practice has resulted in a combination of theoretical and practical research in vehicle-based internal transport systems. An overview is given of the related literature and results are presented that show how different vehicle dispatching rules behave in different environments

Sea Container Terminals

Due to a rapid growth in world trade and a huge increase in containerized goods, sea container terminals play a vital role in globe-spanning supply chains. Container terminals should be able to handle large ships, with large call sizes within the shortest time possible, and at competitive rates. In response, terminal operators, shipping liners, and port authorities are investing in new technologies to improve container handling infrastructure and operational efficiency. Container terminals face challenging research problems which have received much attention from the academic community. The focus of this paper is to highlight the recent developments in the container terminals, which can be categorized into three areas: (1) innovative container terminal technologies, (2) new OR directions and models for existing research areas, and (3) emerging areas in container terminal research. By choosing this focus, we complement existing reviews on container terminal operations

Supporting the design of automated guided vehicle systems in internal logistics

Applications of automated guided vehicle (AGV) systems are becoming increasingly widespread in internal logistics for performing transports automatically. Recent technological advancements in navigation and intelligence have improved the functionality of vehicles and together with attention to Industry 4.0 have created further interest in AGV systems in industry and academia. Research on AGV systems has mainly focused on technical aspects, but to support AGV system design and, thereby, be able to achieve the full potential from use of AGV systems in internal logistics, more knowledge is needed that takes further into consideration aspects related to humans and the organisation, alongside the technical aspects. The purpose of this thesis is to develop knowledge to support the design of AGV systems and three research questions are formulated. The thesis is based on three papers, two of which are based on multiple case studies and one study based on simulation modelling. The thesis results provide input to the design process for AGV systems in three main ways. First, in developing an understanding for which requirements influence an AGV systems and how the requirements can be met in the AGV system configuration. Second, regarding how the load capacity of AGVs impact the performance of the AGV system, and third by identifying challenges with respect to the work organisation and related to human factors when AGV systems are introduced in internal logistics settings

Intelligent Control of Vehicle-Based Internal Transport Systems

“Intelligent control of vehicle-based internal transport (VBIT) systems” copes with real-time dispatching and scheduling of internal-transport vehicles, such as forklifts and guided vehicles. VBIT systems can be found in warehouses, distribution centers, manufacturing plants, airport and transshipment terminals. Using simulation of two realworld environments, dispatching rules described in literature and several newly introduced rules are compared on performance. The performance evaluation suggests that in environments where queue space is not a restriction, distance-based dispatching rules such as shortest-travel-distance-first outperform time-based dispatching rules such as modified-first-come-first-served and using load prearrival information has a significant positive impact on reducing the average load waiting time. Experimental results also reveal that multi-attribute dispatching rules combining distance and time aspects of vehicles and loads are robust to variations in working conditions. In addition, multi-attribute rules which take vehicle empty travel distance and vehicle requirement at a station into account perform very well in heavy-traffic VBIT systems such as baggage handling systems. Besides dispatching rules, the potential contribution of dynamic vehicle scheduling for VBIT systems is investigated. Experiments using simulation in combination with optimization show that when sufficient pre-arrival information is available a dynamic scheduling approach outperforms the dispatching approach. This thesis also evaluates the impact of guide-path layout, load arrival rate and variance, and the amount of load pre-arrival information on different vehicle control approaches (scheduling and dispatching). Based on experimental results, recommendations for selecting appropriate vehicle control approaches for specific situations are presented

The synergistic effect of operational research and big data analytics in greening container terminal operations: a review and future directions

Container Terminals (CTs) are continuously presented with highly interrelated, complex, and uncertain planning tasks. The ever-increasing intensity of operations at CTs in recent years has also resulted in increasing environmental concerns, and they are experiencing an unprecedented pressure to lower their emissions. Operational Research (OR), as a key player in the optimisation of the complex decision problems that arise from the quay and land side operations at CTs, has been therefore presented with new challenges and opportunities to incorporate environmental considerations into decision making and better utilise the ‘big data’ that is continuously generated from the never-stopping operations at CTs. The state-of-the-art literature on OR's incorporation of environmental considerations and its interplay with Big Data Analytics (BDA) is, however, still very much underdeveloped, fragmented, and divergent, and a guiding framework is completely missing. This paper presents a review of the most relevant developments in the field and sheds light on promising research opportunities for the better exploitation of the synergistic effect of the two disciplines in addressing CT operational problems, while incorporating uncertainty and environmental concerns efficiently. The paper finds that while OR has thus far contributed to improving the environmental performance of CTs (rather implicitly), this can be much further stepped up with more explicit incorporation of environmental considerations and better exploitation of BDA predictive modelling capabilities. New interdisciplinary research at the intersection of conventional CT optimisation problems, energy management and sizing, and net-zero technology and energy vectors adoption is also presented as a prominent line of future research

Planning and control of autonomous mobile robots for intralogistics: Literature review and research agenda

Autonomous mobile robots (AMR) are currently being introduced in many intralogistics operations, like manufacturing, warehousing, cross-docks, terminals, and hospitals. Their advanced hardware and control software allow autonomous operations in dynamic environments. Compared to an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system in which a central unit takes control of scheduling, routing, and dispatching decisions for all AGVs, AMRs can communicate and negotiate independently with other resources like machines and systems and thus decentralize the decision-making process. Decentralized decision-making allows the system to react dynamically to changes in the system state and environment. These developments have influenced the traditional methods and decision-making processes for planning and control. This study identifies and classifies research related to the planning and control of AMRs in intralogistics. We provide an extended literature review that highlights how AMR technological advances affect planning and control decisions. We contribute to the literature by introducing an AMR planning and control framework t

INNOVATIVE SIMULATION AND OPTIMIZATION STUDIES ON GRID SYSTEM FOR TRANSSHIPMENT TERMINAL

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Implementation of automated assembly

Research has shown that about 60 - 80% wealth producing activities is related to manufacturing in major industrial countries. Increased competition in industry has resulted in a greater emphasis on using automation to improve productivity and quality and also to reduce cost. Most of the manufacturing works such as machining, painting, storage, retrieval, inspection and transportation have changed to automation successfully, except assembly. Manual assembly is predominant over automatic assembly techniques due to inherent assembly problem and the fact that the assembly machines lack the innate intelligence of human operator and lack sufficient flexibility to changeover when product designs and market demands change. With the advent of flexible manufacturing systems, which involve very large capital costs and complex interactions. For the reduction the risk of the investment and analyze the system, simulation is a valuable tool in planning the systems and in analyzing their behavior, and get the best use of them. This thesis applies animation techniques to simulate an automatic assembly system. In chapter 1 to 9, we cover some of the fundamental concepts and principles of automatic assembly and simulation. Some manufacturers put the subject of part orientation first on their list of priorities; but design for assembly (DFA) techniques have proven extremely valuable in developing better assembly techniques and ultimately, better products. We discuss DFA in chapter 1, part feeding and orientation in chapter 2. Chapter 3, 4 and 5 are concerned with assembly process, machines and control system, respectively. Annual sales for industrial robots have been growing at the rate of about 25 percent per year in major industrial countries, we review the robot application in chapter 6. The cost of material handling is a significant portion of the total cost of production, material storage uses valuable space and consumes investment, we cover these two topics in chapter 7 and 8. Chapter 9 is concerned with simulation. In chapter 10, 11,12 and 13, we implement a software package IGRIP to build a model of an automatic assembly system and analyze the result