In this paper, simulation is used to compare the performance of three Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) flow configurations: conventional, tandem and loop in three differently sized facilities. The objective is to study the effect of these configurations in various facilities on minimizing the ratio of total unloaded travel time of all AGVs in the system. | Journal of Automation and Control Engineering Vol. 4, No. 2, April 2016 Studying the Effect of Facility Size on the Selection of Automated Guided Vehicle Flow Configurations Tarek Al-Hawari, Ena'am S. Al-Zoubi, and Hussam Alshraideh Industrial Engineering Dept., Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan Email: tarek321@ Abstract—In this paper, simulation is used to compare the performance of three Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) flow configurations: conventional, tandem and loop in three differently sized facilities. The objective is to study the effect of these configurations in various facilities on minimizing the ratio of total unloaded travel time of all AGVs in the system. It is found that this ratio is highly affected by AGV configurations as well as the size of the facility and number of AGVs used. categories: mathematical procedures, metaheuristic methods, and simulation [9]. Several classes of mathematical (exact) algorithms based on integer programming [10], [11], dynamic programming [12], and graph theory [13] have been used in solving this problem. For example, Fazlollahtabar et al. [14] tried to optimize the material flow in a flexible job-shop automated manufacturing system using mathematical programming. The objective was to optimize the material flow with respect to machine specifications and demand fluctuations. Researchers developed several metaheuristics with different search algorithms such as: Simulated annealing [15], tabu search and genetic algorithms (GA) [16] for the routing problem. They show their superiority over exact methods by being able to solve large complicated combinatorial optimization problems in an efficient way and less time. The final category in solving flow path problems which is the subject of our study is simulation. Simulation techniques have been implemented widely in designing AGV configurations in FMS [17]-[25]. Computer simulation is assumed the most convenient and flexible way to .
