An AGV control policy reflecting the current and future status information of a semiconductor and LCD production shop

Facilities are getting more automated and informative in modern manufacturing systems, especially in semiconductor and LCD plants. These systems keep a great deal of such information on its current and near-future status as the arrival time and job completion time of their parts. This paper presents an efficient policy for AGV and part routing using information on the future status of the system where AGVs are playing a central role for material handling. Efficient control of AGVs is very important because AGV systems often become the bottleneck and limit the total production capacity of a very expensive plant. The cell controller records the future events chronologically in Next Event Schedule, and uses this list to determine to which place the AGVs and parts to be sent.