Composite Dispatching Rules for
Multiple-Vehicle AGV Systems Jim Lee
Engineering Management Program
University of Southwestern Louisiana
Lafayette, LA 70504
E-mail: jlee@usl.edu
The objective of this research is to
evaluate
composite
the
performance of
AGV dispatching
three
rules which
can be easily implemented in
manufacturing or assembly systems.
Attempts were also made to compare the
composite rules to a simple dispatching
rule and to identify system operating
parameters which might affect the
performance difference of the rules.
Composite dispatching rules tested in this
study are based on combinations of
concepts proposed in previous research.
Discrete event simulation models were
developed to implement the heuristic rules
in a hypothetical assembly system with a
zone control scheme to avoid vehicle
collision. The simulation result revealed
that a combination of the Nearest Station
and the Stay-in-the-same-station (NS-SS)
rule outperformed the other rules.
Statistical analyses on the simulation
output suggest that a composite rule
which minimizes the AGV travel distance
might be a good control strategy, and the
operational factors which affect the
performance difference are dependent on
the type of dispatching rules.
Keywords: Automatic Guided Vehicle
System; Composite Dispatching Rules;
Simulation Models; Statistical Analyses.
1. INTRODUCTION
Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) are being
increasingly used to transport raw materials and
work-in-process on the factory floor of many manu-
facturing industries. These vehicles are driverless,
battery-powered, and can be programmed from a
system controller to travel along a predetermined
path. With the advance of AGV technology, the on-
line control system becomes more complicated and
costly to develop. The control system dispatches idle
vehicles to perform material handling functions in
the warehouse and the shop floor, carrying materials
from one station to the other. Failure to design an
efficient on-line AGV dispatching algorithm may
lead to poor performance of the manufacturing
system.
An AGV dispatching rule assigns an idle AGV to
move a load of materials from one location to another
location in the manufacturing system. If there is no
unassigned load of materials, the AGV remains idle
and awaits a loading task to emerge. The idle vehicle
may also move to another location in the system in
anticipation of a new task. Two types of dispatching
rules are needed to efficiently control the movement
of AGVs. When the number of unassigned loading
tasks exceeds that of the free AGVs, vehicle-initiated
rules to prioritize the tasks are needed. On the
converse, vehicles have to be prioritized based on
workcenter-initiated rules (Raju and Chetty, 1993).
Numerous AGV dispatching rules have been
proposed and evaluated in the literature (Egbelu and
121
Tanchoco 1984, Russel and Tanchoco 1984, Egbelu
1987, Yim and Linn 1993). However, most of the
common rules proposed in previous research do not
provide information to break the tie when two or
more jobs receive the same priority. For example,
First-Come-First-Serve (FCFS) is a common rule for
AGV to select a job. In a busy manufacturing envi-
ronment, jobs may arrive at various workcenters at
the same time. A tie-breaking rule is then needed to
further prioritize the jobs. In general, the tie-breaking
rule can be another simple dispatching rule. But
whether a tie-breaking rule can significantly affect
the performance of the AGV system has not been
fully explored in the published research.
This research expands the previous work by
considering and evaluating three practical yet simple
composite rules which combine the primary dis-
patching rules with tie-breaking rules. Discrete-event
simulation models were developed to implement the
composite dispatching rules in a hypothetical assem-
bly system with a unidirectional AGV track layout.
A factorial experiment was conducted to investigate
the importance of several system operating param-
eters related to the performance of the composite
dispatching rules of AGVs.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 reviews the relevant literature on AGV
dispatching. The assembly system with the AGV
track layout and the AGV dispatching rules tested in
this study are described in section 3. Design of the
simulation experiments to evaluate the performance
of the rules is discussed in section 4, with the output
analysis presented in section 5. Finally, the concluding
remarks are given in section 6.
2. BACKGROUND LITERATURE
An early study of AGV dispatching problem was
found in Egbelu and Tanchoco (1984). They classified
AGV dispatching rules into two broad categories:
workcenter-initiated rules and vehicle-initiated rules.
A workcenter-initiated rule allows a workcenter
requiring service to select a vehicle from a set of
vehicles available. Common workcenter-initiated
rules include (1) random vehicle, (2) nearest vehicle,
(3) farthest vehicle, (4) longest idle vehicle, and (5)
least utilized vehicle. A vehicle-initiated rules allows
an idle vehicle to select a material
handling task from
one of the workcenters or warehouse. Common rules
under this category are (1) random workcenter, (2)
shortest travel time or distance, (3) longest travel
time or distance, (4) maximum outgoing queue size,
(5) minimum remaining outgoing queue space, (6)
modified first come first served where each
workcenter is allowed to have only one request in the
122
queue at any time, and (7) shop arrival time (select
the workcenter with the material that has been in the
shop the longest.) They compared the performance of
the rules in a batch manufacturing system and found
that in a busy shop the vehicle-initiated rules have
more significant effects on the system performance
than the workcenter-initiated rules.
Newton (1985) applied the vehicle-look-for-work
(VLFW) logic in dispatching AGV where the nearest
station rule was combined with the first-come-first-
served concept so that demands waiting an inordi-
nate amount of time are serviced within reasonable
time. Hodgson et al. (1987) developed modified
VLFW rules for a job shop environment. The selec-
tion of a target station for service in their rules is
dependent on existing as well as potential demands
from the stations. Lee (1994) evaluated several simple
vehicle-initiated rules where an AGV can stay in the
same workstation to minimize the travel distance, or
go to a high-activity area in anticipation of a new
task.
The vehicle-initiated rules can be further classified
as a source-driven rule or a demand-driven rule
based on the push and pull concepts. The source-
driven rule is based on the push concept: an idle
vehicle selects a load of materials to move from an
output queue that has the highest priority. The
demand-driven rule operates on a pull concept
where an idle vehicle selects the load that has the
highest demand from its succeeding workcenter.
Egbelu (1987) compared the performance of a de-
mand-driven rule and several source-driven rules in
a batch manufacturing system. The study indicated
that the demand-driven rule is comparable to source-
driven rules. Yim and Linn (1993) stated in a flexible
manufacturing environment that an idle vehicle must
select not only the load, but also its destination (next
process). The vehicle-initiated rules can be imple-
mented with the push and the pull concepts based on
the execution order of the two selection functions. In
the push-dispatching rule, an idle vehicle first selects
a load to be moved and then determines the destina-
tion of the selected load. In the pull- dispatching
rules, a workcenter with the highest need for load
(job) replenishment is selected first. Then, a job is
selected among a set of jobs which can move to the
selected workcenter. By pairing the load and process
selection, they evaluated numerous push and pull
dispatching rules. The results showed that there was
no significant difference between the push and pull
based dispatching rules.
Sabuncuoglu and Hommertzheim (1992, 1993)
studied the performance of both job scheduling rules
and vehicle-initiated AGV dispatching rules in a FMS
model. The Largest Queue Size (LQS) rule, where the
AGV was dispatched to the machine with the largest
queue, produced better mean flow-time and due date
performance than the FCFS rule for all the machine
scheduling rules tested. In Tang et al. (1993), they
considered both vehicle-initiated and workcenter-
initiated AGV dispatching along with the job sched-
uling rules. Their results show that the various
dispatching rules have different degrees of influence
on the performance criteria. No single rule can
dominate other rules in all performance criteria.
An issue that could affect the performance of the
dispatching rule is the type of AGV track layout and
control mechanism. To reduce the complexity of
traffic control, Bartholdi and Platzman (1989) proposed
an idea of decentralization of control over AGVs
using single vehicle loops. In their control system,
each AGV can be programmed independently of the
others so that vehicles can be added or removed from
the system. It offers flexibility in the design stage of
AGVS since the total number of vehicles needed in a
system can be changed. Bozer and Srinivasan (1991)
proposed a tandem configuration for AGVS, which is
aimed at simplifying an AGV control system. In the
tandem system the stations or workcenters are
partitioned into non-overlapping single-vehicle
closed loops with additional pick-up/delivery points
provided as an interface between adjacent loops. This
approach provides the simplicity for traffic control.
Choi et al. (1994) reported in a simulation study that
the traditional &dquo;multiple-vehicle&dquo; layout could
produce a shorter job flow time and AGV waiting
time in the stage area, while the tandem layout might
perform better based on the number of jobs completed
and vehicle blocking time.
Mahadevan and Narendran (1990) analyzed
several issues related to the design and operational
control of AGV systems. Their result indicates that
the single-vehicle loop configuration performs better
than the multi-vehicle systems. One disadvantage of
the single-vehicle loops is their inflexibility in tolerat-
ing vehicle breakdowns which will present a prob-
lem to normal operations. Sharp and Liu (1990)
examined a design issue with respect to adding
shortcuts and off-line spurs to fixed-path, closed-loop
AGV systems. They showed that the savings in travel
time and waiting time due to congestion was signifi-
cant enough to justify the costs of building shortcuts
and off-line spurs. Faraji and Batta (1994) used
similarity-measure techniques to partition a job shop
into single-vehicle cells.
Review of the current literature reveals that vehicle-
initiated rules have more significant effects on the
system performance than the workstation-initiated
rules in multiple-vehicle systems. However, most of
the rules proposed in previous research are either
oversimplified as they do not provide information to
break the tie when two or more jobs receive the same
priority, or designed for systems with specific
requirements. The assembly system configuration
and the composite rules which combine the concepts
of the dispatching rules discussed in current literature
with tie-breaking rules are presented in the next
section.
3. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION AND AGV
DISPATCHING
The hypothetical assembly system studied in this
paper consists of four major assembly lines or
workcenters and a warehouse. Each of the four
workcenters performs different types of assembly
tasks and is capable of producing specific groups of
products. Raw materials enter the system at the
warehouse entrance where they are bundled and
stored by type. They are then transported to the
corresponding workcenters based on the part type by
AGVs for assembly. Upon completion of the assem-
bly tasks, the products are transported back to the
warehouse. Since assembly systems usually involve a
large number of processing operations, the products
from each of the workcenters can also be considered
as subassemblies requiring further processing in
other parts of a plant.
3.1 AGV Track Layout
The assembly system with the AGV track layout is
shown in Figure 1. This layout was first studied in
Maxwell and Muckstadt (1982). Several subsequent
studies related to AGV systems have also used this
layout. It is a unidirectional and multiple-vehicle
system. Each of the four major assembly lines has a
pair of drop-off station (D) and pick-up station (P) for
material handling purpose. The possible routes of
AGVs among the workcenters and the warehouse
can be thought as directed links of a network. The
nodes in the network are labeled from 1 to 14 in the
figure including the incoming dock (node 1) and
outgoing dock (node 10) in the warehouse, drop-off
stations (nodes 2, 4, 6 and 8), pick-up stations (nodes
3, 5, 7, 9), and junctions (nodes 11 through 14) on the .
track layout. The track layout shows direction of
travel and the length of the links between pairs of
nodes measured in feet.
Four types of assembly jobs may arrive at incoming
dock. Based on the type of the assembly jc>b, an AGV
is needed to carry the materials related to the job to
the corresponding drop-off station, which represents
the beginning of an assembly line. The materials are
then assembled into finished products which can be
123
Figure 1. The AGV Track Layout (in feet).
picked up from the pick up station at the end of the
assembly line. The warehouse can be divided into
three areas. The area near the incoming dock (node 1)
is for the storage of raw materials. The finished
products are stored in the area near the outgoing
dock (node 10). In the center of the warehouse is the
staging area for the AGVs, where the load and
unload operations are carried out. The idle AGVs can
also be parked in the staging area.
Since multiple vehicles are allowed in the system,
traffic control is needed. To avoid collisions, the AGV
control system often has a zone control capability
that allows only one AGV to access the junction or a
section of the track at a time. In this study, the track
layout can be viewed as a network consisting of
many junctions or nodes and links. Each link is
divided into a sequence of non-overlapping zones so
that one vehicle is allowed in one zone at a time,
preventing collisions between AGVs. The zone length
124
must be larger than the length of any AGV used in
the system, and the length of each junction can be
considered as a regular zone. The right to use a zone
or a junction is based on the First-Come-First-Serve
(FCFS) concept. With the unidirectional track design
in the studied system, there are four junctions as
shown in Figure 1.
3.2 Composite AGV Dispatching Rules
Vehicle-initiated Dispatching Rules
On completion of the unloading operation at a
drop-off station, a vehicle-initiated dispatching rule
must be used to send the idle AGV to one of the pick-
up stations or the warehouse to perform other
material handling activities. Four vehicle-initiated
dispatching rules were evaluated in this study. The
first rule, Stay in Same Station (SS), was used as a
benchmark for comparison purpose. The other three
rules are composite rules. The composite rules are
proposed for study because they are based on the
concepts of shortest distance and maximum outgoing
queue size (high queue), which have shown superior
or competitive performance over the other rules in
previous research (Egbelu and Tanchoco, 1984;
Sabuncuoglu and Hommertzheim, 1992 and 1993).
Also, the logic of the selected rules can be easily
programmed in the control system and easily under-
stood by the shop floor personnel. They are described
below:
1. Stay in Same Station (SS): When an AGV completes
a drop-off assignment at an assembly line, it goes
to the pick-up station of the same assembly line,
expecting to carry some finished goods back to the
warehouse. The AGV may need to wait at the pick-
up station if finished goods are not available, but
the level of work-in-process (WIP) on the shop
floor and the AGV travel distance could be reduced.
2. Nearest Station and Stay in Same Station (NS-SS):
When an AGV completes a task, it scans through a
look-for-work list to acquire the nearest assignment.
The AGV may move to any of the pick-up stations
of the various assembly lines. If there is no load
assignment on the list, it goes to the nearest pick-
up station and waits for the next available assign-
ment. In this study, the nearest station is always
the station in the same line. In summary, this rule
can be written as:
IF look-for-work list is not empty, GO TO the
nearest station with a request;
IF look-for-work list is empty, GO TO the pick-
up station on the same line.
3. Nearest Station and High Activity Area (NS-HA):
The AGV scans through the look-for-work list to
acquire the nearest assignment. If there is no load
assignment on the list, it returns to the incoming
dock in the warehouse, a high activity area in
anticipation of a new task. This rule can be written
as:
IF look-for-work list is not empty, GO TO the
nearest station with arequest;
IF look-for-work list is empty, GO TO the high
activity area.
4. High Queue and Nearest Station (HQ-NS): The
AGV goes to the pick-up station of the assembly
line with the highest number of in-process jobs. If
there are more than two stations having the
highest number of jobs, the AGV goes to the
nearest station. If there is no load assignment on
the list, it also goes to the nearest pick-up station
and wait for the next available assignment.
IF look-for-work list is not empty, GO TO the
station with the highest queue;
IF two or more stations have the highest queue,
GO TO the nearest station;
IF look-for-work list is empty, GO TO the pick-
up station on the same line.
If we assume that the assembly jobs are released to
the workcenters based on the due date, then the SS
rule can be considered as a demand-driven or pull-
based rule because the idle vehicle always stays at
the same line to &dquo;pull&dquo; the finished product as soon
as it becomes available. The NS/HA and HQ/NS
rules are push-based rules since the idle vehicle
selects a load of materials to move from an output
queue that has the highest priority. The NS/SS rule is
based on a mix of pull and push concept.
Workcenter-initiated
Dispatching Rule
The focus of this study is on the vehicle-initiated
rules as discussed above. In the case where an
assembly line completes a job and requests for AGV
service, the Nearest Vehicle (NV) rule, a workstation-
initiated rule, is always used in the study with the tie
broken arbitrarily. This rule is selected because of its
superior performance over other rules in published
research (Egbelu and Tanchoco, 1984). In a unidirec-
tional layout, the probability that two or more idle
vehicles have exactly identical distances to a worksta-
tion is relatively small. Therefore, the tie-breaking
rule should not have significant effect on the system
performance.
4. SIMULATION EXPERIMENTS
To evaluate the four dispatching rules in the
system described above, four discrete event simula-
tion models were developed in SIMAN language
(Pegden et. al, 1990). In the simulation model, all the
constituent elements of the AGV system to be studied
were defined. Initially all AGVs are parked adjacent
to the staging area in the warehouse. Four types of
assembly jobs are created based on a discrete prob-
ability function: 18% of the jobs are type 1, 33(Y,, are
type 2, 27% are type 3, and 22% are type 4. As
incoming jobs are generated, four AGVs are available
to carry loads of materials from the warehouse to the
drop-off stations of the assembly lines. The number
of AGVs needed in the system was determined based
on a preliminary simulation study. A dispatching
rule is used when an AGV completes a drop-off task
125
and looks for the next task. When an AGV approaches
a junction, a FCFS control scheme is used to avoid
possible collisions.
Three factors which might affect the performance
of the rules were identified, including (1) mean time
between arrivals (TBA), (2) arrival distribution (AD),
and (3) ratio of AGV travel time to the assembly time
(RT). On the average an assembly job may arrive to
the warehouse at every 4 minutes or every 8 minutes.
This inter-arrival time can be uniformly distributed
with a possible 50% variation above and below the
mean, or exponentially distributed. Finally, the ratio
of travel time to assembly time can be 0.25, 0.5 or 1 in
the simulation. The minimum &dquo;round trip&dquo; travel
distance from node 1 to node 10 is 340 feet, connect-
ing nodes 1,14,8,9,13, and 10. The travel time is 1.7
minutes if an AGV is operated at 200 feet/minute.
When the assembly time is 6.8 minutes, then the RT
ratio is 1.7/6.8 or 0.25. If the AGV speed is reduced to
100 feet/minute, then the ratio would be 3.4/6.8 or
0.5. The ratio would increase to 1 if the AGV speed is
further reduced by half. The problem data and the
experiment factors and their levels tested are summa-
rized in Table 1.
Given a simulation model, the factors were tested
at 2 by 2 by 3 levels resulting a 2x2x3 factorial design
with 12 experiments. A number of trial runs were
performed to validate the model and to determine a
proper simulation warm-up period. First, it was
observed that several statistics in the simulation
started to show a smaller variation after about 200
minutes. Then, there was very little variation among
the replications. With this in mind, each simulation
in our experiment was run for 480 minutes after a
warm-up period of 240 minutes, simulating an 8-hour
shift. The method of common random numbers
(Kleijnen, 1987) was used to reduce the variance in
the simulation output. Statistical test using ANOVA
has shown that the replication effect did not signifi-
cantly affect the statistics collected in the simulation.
Table 1. Problem Data for Simulation
126
Therefore, each experiment was replicated three
times. The total number of simulation experiments
performed is 4 (rules) x 12 (experiments) x 3 (replica-
tions) which is 144.
5. OUTPUT ANALYSIS
The performance measures collected from the
simulation are: (1) the number of jobs completed per
shift or throughput, (2) average flowtime per job, and
(3) average inventory level in the system, or work-in-
process (WIP). The throughput measures the produc-
tivity, while the flowtime and WIP show the effort in
reducing on-line inventory. Statistical tests on
normality and homoscedasticity were performed to
validate the assumptions needed on the data sets
representing performance measures of the rules. The
test results show that the data sets satisfy both
normality and homoscedasticity at 0.05 level of
significance, so further statistical analysis can be
carried out.
To measure the performance difference of heuristic
rules and to identify factors differentiating the
system performance, the percent differences is an
appropriate measure. Given two heuristic rules HI
and H2, the percent difference in throughput (TP),
%TP(H1/H2), flowtime (FT), ‘%FT(H1/H2), and
work-in-process (W), o,{,W(H1 /H2) are defined as
follows:
 The first set of tests performed were the paired-t
tests to determine whether the performance measures
by rules are significantly different. Paired percent
differences were used instead of paired differences
since percent differences are more likely to be homo-
scedastic across the sample space than simple differ-
ences. Under the null hypothesis, the percent differ-
ence between a pair of heuristics is
equal to zero. If
the null hypothesis is rejected at 0.05 level of signifi-
cance, it is concluded that the-difference is signifi-
cant. The average values and the t tests results from
the simulation are summarized in Table 2 by rules.
The rank given in Table 2 is based on the result of
paired-t test at 0.05 level of significance, where two
rules would receive the same rank if they are not
significantly different. The percent difference and the
level of significance from the t tests are shown in
Table 3.
Table 2. Performance Measures
by Rules
Table 3. Results oft Tests on Performance Difference
*Significant at 0.05 Level
The results from statistical tests indicated that the
NS-SS and HQ-NS performed equally well in
throughput and WIP, while NS-SS outperformed
HQ-NS on flowtime. It is not surprising to see HQ-
NS perform well in throughput, because both the HQ
and NS concepts have been shown to yield competitive
results in the literature. But it is interesting to see that
NS-SS, a rule which minimizes the travel distance, is
competitive with the other rules. The NS-HA rule
ranks third in throughput, but it has the best
flowtime and WIP. Overall the NS-SS can be consid-
ered as the best rule when both the throughput and
flowtime are considered.
One observation on our assembly system is that a
lower part release rate (i.e. releasing parts from
warehouse to assembly lines) can cause the average
part flowtime to decrease, because the part waiting
time and queue size are reduced. However, the
throughput may also decrease if the machines and
other resources are not fully utilized. Therefore, it is
possible that one rule performs well on throughput
but poorly on flowtime, and vise versa. Notice that
the WIP for SS rule is high because the WIP in the
warehouse is also included. On the shop floor the SS
rule should have very low WIP level.
Table 3 shows the mean percent differences among
the rules in three performance measures. In general,
the difference between SS rule and the other three
composite rules ranges from 29% to 33%, while the
differences among the three composite rules are
within 6%. Based on the percent difference, an
analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedure was then
performed to identify the factors that may affect the
percent differences in performance measures. The
ANOVA results are summarized in Table 4. The first
column in the table lists the pairs of rules where
significant differences in performance measures were
found by t-tests. The level of significance in the table
indicates that a factor or factor interaction signifi-
cantly affected the performance difference. When the
composite rules are compared with the SS rule, the
percent differences in all three performance measures
are significantly affected by the mean time between
arrival (TBA), travel to assembly time ratio (RT), and
the interaction between the two factors (TBA*RT).
However, in throughput and flowtime, the percent
differences between the composite rules are primarily
caused by mean time between arrival (TBA), the
arrival distribution (AD), and the interactions between
the two factors (TBA*AD). The level of significance of
the ANOVA is 0.05. This observation suggests that
operational factors which affect the performance
difference are dependent on the type of dispatching
rules.
127
 Table 4. ANOVA Results -
Factors
The ANOVA results suggest that further statistical
analyses are needed to gain a better understanding of
the relationship between the magnitude of the
performance differences and the significant factors.
To accomplish this, experiment data were grouped
by factor settings and the mean values from different
data groups were compared by Tukey’s tests. Table 5
shows the mean values of groups of data by factor
settings which are significantly different as detected
by the Tukey’s tests. In most cases a lower mean time
between arrivals (TBA) or higher arrival rate could
enlarge the performance differences between two
heuristic rules. For example, when the TBA is 8
minutes, the percent difference between NS-SS and
SS is 9.3%. The difference increases to 51.7% when
TBA is 4 minutes. An exception is observed when
comparing two composite rules: NS-SS and NS-HA.
We learned from t-test that NS-SS outperformed NS-
HA rules. Table 5 shows that the difference in
throughput between these two rules is higher (3.9%)
when the arrival rate is at the lower level. Mixed
results were also found in arrival distribution (AD).
In general the percent difference between two rules
increases when the arrival distribution is completely
random (exponential distribution), but this is not
always the case.
Finally, consistent results were obtained from the
analysis of factor RT. A low RT indicates that AGV
128
Affecting the Performance Differences
travel time isrelatively short as compared to the
assembly time. Under the operation condition of a
low RT, the Stay-in-same-station (SS) concept would
not work very well. Sending the AGVs around to
perform services to other workstations seems to be
a more efficient operating strategy. The difference in
throughput between SS and other rules ranges from
56.2% to 57.6% when RT is 0.25. This percent difference
reduces to 2.5% to 5.1% when the RT is 1. Notice that
RT does not significantly affect the performance
differences in composite rules. The NS-SS rule, which
results in the best throughput, is the one which has
the smallest travelling distance among the three
composite rules. z
6. CONCLUSIONS
Four vehicle-initiated AGV dispatching rules were
tested in this study. Three of the four rules are based
on combinations of simple rules proposed in previ-
ous research, while the SS rule is used as a bench-
mark for comparison purpose. The result revealed
that the NS-SS and HQ-NS performed equally well in
throughput and WIP, while NS-SS outperformed
HQ-NS on flowtime. The performance difference
between the SS rule and the composite rules was
significantly affected by the job inter-arrival time
(TBA), the ratio of AGV travel time to assembly time
 Table 5. Tukey’s Mean Tests on Performance Difference
*
Difference not significant at 0.05 Level
(RT), and the interaction between the two factors
(TBA*RT). The difference between composite rules,
however, was affected by job inter-arrival time
(TBA), the arrival
distribution (AD), and the interaction between the
two factors (TBA*AD). The simulation result suggests
that a composite dispatching rule which minimizes
the AGV travel distance might be a good control
strategy. The operational factors which affect the
performance difference can be varied based on the
nature of the rules.
The result that suggests that NS-SS is the best rule
is of significant value. It reveals that a mix of pull
and push concepts may be the best dispatching
strategies. It also shows the need to seriously consider
the tie-breaking policy in operation strategy. More
work is needed to evaluate composite rules in other
manufacturing environments.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The author wishes to thank Mr. Montri Tangjarukil
for his assistance in preparing the computer simulation
programs. This research is partially supported by
Louisiana Education Quality Support Fund under
Contract Number LEOSF(1995-1997)-RD-A-34.
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Kleijnen, J.P.C. (1987), Statistical Tools for Simulation JIM LEE is Associate Professor of
Practitioners, Dekker, New York. Engineering Management at the
Lee, J. (1994). "Dispatching AGVs in an Apparel Manufac- University of Southwestern Louisiana.
turing System," Proceedings of 5th Annual Academic He received a BS degree in Industrial
Apparel Research Conference, Lafayette, Louisiana. 10.1-10.8. Engineering from Tunghai University,
Mahadevan, B. and T.T. Narendran (1990), "Design of an and MS and PhD degrees in Industrial
Automated Guided Vehicle-based Material Handling and Management Engineering from the
System for a Flexible Manufacturing System," Interna- University of Iowa. His research areass
tional Journal of Production Research, 28(9), 1611-1622. include simulation, production and
Maxwell, W. L. and J. A. Muckstadt (1982), "Design of quality management, decision support
Automatic Guided Vehicle Systems", IIE Transactions, systems, and computer-integrated manufacturing. He has
14, 2, 114-124. performed and managed research projects in various areas
of computer aided modeling of engineering problems. His
Newton, D. (1985) "Simulation Models Calculate How industrial experiences include being a manager of a
Many Automated Guided Vehicles Are Needed,"
Industrial Engineering, February, 17, 68-73. consulting group in Taiwan, providing services to local
manufacturing companies in building production planning
Pegden, C. D., R.E. Shannon and R.P. Sadowski (1990), and quality control systems, and as a production planner
Introduction to Simulation Using SIMAN, McGraw-Hill. with a leading U. S. electronics manufacturer.
Raju, K. R. and O. V. K. Chetty (1993), "Design and
Evaluation of Automated Guided Vehicle Systems for
Flexible Manufacturing Systems: An Extended Timed
Petri Net Based Approach," International Journal of
Production Research, 31(5), 1069-1096.
Russel, R. S. and J. M. A. Tanchoco (1984), "An Evaluation
of Vehicle Dispatching Rules and Their Effect on Shop
Performance," Material Flow, 1, 271-280.
Sabuncuoglu, I. and D. L. Hommertzheim (1992), "Experi-
mental Investigation of FMS Machine and AGV
Scheduling Rules Against the Mean Flow-time Criterion,"
International Journal of Production Research, 30, 1617-1635.
Sabuncuoglu, I. and D. L. Hommertzheim (1993), "Experi-
mental Investigation of FMS Due-Date Scheduling
Problem: Evaluation of Machine and AGV Scheduling
Rules," International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing
, 5, 301-324.
System
Sharp, G. P. and F. F. Liu (1990), "An Analytical Method
for Configuring Fixed-path, Closed-loop Material
Handling System," International Journal of Production
Research, 28, 4, 757-783.
Tang, L. L., Y. Yih, and C-Y. Liu (1993), "A Study on
Decision Rules of a Scheduling Model in an FMS,"
Computers In Industry, 22, 1-13.
Yim, D. S. and R. J. Linn (1993), "Push and Pull Rules for
Dispatching Automated Guided Vehicles in a Flexible
Manufacturing System," International Journal of Production
Research, 31, 1, 43-57.

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