The Efficiency of Two Groups of <i>N</i> Machines Served by a Single Robot

Abstract

Many modern manufacturing facilities use carousel conveyors for storage of work-in-progress, and automatic devices to place and retrieve items in and from the storage locations. The ‘carousel conveyor problem’ is directly related to the ‘patrolling repairman problem’ reported by others. In this paper, we extend the model to include a single robot serving two or more carousels. The approach makes use of known results for the patrolling repairman.