Dynamic relative positioning of AGVs in a loop layout to minimize mean system response time

One of the control decisions in the operation of an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system is to determine the home locations of idle vehicles. In this paper, the problems of selecting home location of a vehicle when idle in a single loop AGV network is presented. As the number of unit loads to be picked up at each workstation dynamically changes over time, the optimum home location of vehicles may also change. Based on the objective of minimizing the expected response time of a vehicle, models are constructed. Example problems are given to illustrate the use of the solution algorithms. The results of the system response times obtained using the dynamic dwell point models are compared with those of other dwell point rules.