Efficient Simulator Based on Meta-Heuristic for FMS and AGV Systems Design and Control

Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) based on Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) have emerged as highly competitive manufacturing technologies of the last decade. However, their design and control are complex tasks since the decision problems related to the different system parameters such as sizing and scheduling are usually shown as NP-hard. Nowadays, computer simulation is one of the most commonly used methods for solving these problems. Now, we present a complete simulation tool which allows the design, analysis and control of FMS based on AGV. This tool is composed of three modules: (1) A simulation module which allows the estimation of the user introduced configuration. (2) An optimization module which is based on a meta-heuristic: the simulated annealing. This module is coupled with the simulation one in order to obtain an Executive Information System that is able to generate an optimal configuration. (3) A reactive control system which is based on the concept of real-time simulation and allows dynamic dispatching and routing of different systems inside the global FMS. The different developed modules have been validated by using a typical automated manufacturing system.