A Multi-Commodity Network Design Approach for Automated Guided Vehicle Systems

This paper presents a multi-commodity network design approach to solve the problem of simultaneously locating I/O stations and determining the orientation of path segments in a flexible manufacturing environment. A unidirectional material handling system is assumed, as they are more common in industry than bi-directional systems mainly due to their simpler control. The problem is modelled using a mixed integer linear program with the objective of minimising material handling costs.