A mixed integer programming approach for multi-cyclic robotic flowshop scheduling with time window constraints

This paper deals with the cyclic robotic flowshop scheduling problem with time window constraints, where parts are processed successively on multiple machines with upper and lower bounds on processing times and the transportation of parts among the machines is executed by a robot. In contrast with most previous studies, we consider the multi-cyclic scheduling problem in which two or more identical parts enter and leave the robotic flowshop during each cycle. We present the first mixed integer programming (MIP) model for the multi-cyclic robotic flowshop scheduling problem based on the description and analysis of the problem. We solve the model using commercial software CPLEX. Computational experiment on benchmark and randomly generated instances indicates that the proposed MIP approach can effectively solve real-life scheduling problems.