Development of Fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS Approach for Multi-objective Scheduling Problems in Robotic Flexible Assembly Cells

Abstract

In today's industrial world, flexibility is a significant issue, keeping industrial companies on a competitive edge. Flexibility signifies a manufacturing system's ability to respond quickly and effectively to market trends, which have become more dynamic and unpredictable, emphasising the need for increasingly flexible systems. One such system is Robotic Flexible Assembly Cell (RFAC), highly modern system, mainly structured from industrial robots, assembly stations and an automated material handling system. The RFAC always require a sophisticated scheduling approach, not only to prevent collisions between robots but also to guarantee higher system utilisation. Hence, the aim of this paper is to integrate Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) with Fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (FTOPSIS) to optimise the dynamic scheduling in RFAC under different performance measures. This integration offers significant advantages such as dealing with complex decision problems, and handling any decision problems when the information is uncertain due to vagueness and imprecision. In this integration, the FAHP was applied to determine the relative weights for multi scheduling criteria; and the FTOPSIS was applied for evaluation of each alternative scheduling combination based on its overall performance in order to make a final decision.