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Material handling is a specialised activity for a modern manufacturing concern. Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) are invariably used for material handling in flexible manufacturing Systems (FMSs) due to their flexibility. The quantitative analysis of an AGV system is useful for determining the material flow rates, operation times, length of delivery, length of empty move of AGV and the number of AGVs required for a typical FMS cell layout. The efficiency of the material handling system, such as AGV can be improved by reducing the length of empty move. The length of empty move of AGV depends upon despatching and scheduling methods. If these methods of AGVs are not properly planned, the length of empty move of AGV is greater than the length of delivery .This results in increase in material handling time which in turn increases the number of AGVs required in FMS cell. This paper presents a method for optimising the length of empty travel of AGV in a typical FMS cell layout.
Ramana et al. (1997) studied this question.