SCHEDULING OF COUPLED TASKS AND ONE-MACHINE NO-WAIT ROBOTIC CELLS

Coupled task scheduling problems are known since more than 25 years. Several complexity results have been established in the meantime, but the status of the identical task case remains still unsettled. We describe a new class of equivalent 1-machine no-wait robotic cell problems. It turns out that scheduling of identical coupled tasks corresponds to the production of a single part type in the robotic cell. We shall describe new algorithmic procedures to solve this robotic cell problem, allowing lower and upper bounds on the production time and discussing in particular cyclic production plans.