Scheduling of coupled tasks and one-machine no-wait robotic cells

Coupled task scheduling problems were first studied more than 25 years ago. Several complexity results have been established in the meantime, but the status of the identical task case still remains unsettled. We describe a new class of equivalent one-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 a robotic cell. We 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. This research has been supported by INTAS Project 03-51-5501 This paper has appeared as a journal publication in: Computers & Operations Research, Volume 36, Issue 2, pages 301-307, February 2009. For information about the journal, see: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws home/300/description#description ∗[email protected], Tel: (33) 4 76 57 48 42, Fax: (33) 4 76 57 46 02