Aiming at sustainable production - how the implementation of priority-based dispatching in flexible job shops can support sustainability

In this paper a scheduling approach for a flexible job shop using automated guided vehicles (AGVs) is analyzed. The calculation of the optimal schedule in this complex manufacturing system is NP-hard. Hence, different priority dispatching rules for machines and vehicles are compared implementing the influence of uncertainty. The realized simulation study focuses especially on green manufacturing. Therefore, resource and surface consumption are evaluated as sustainable key figures within our study. The evaluation shows, that looking at the sustainability and the resilience of the flexible job shop, a general improvement can be achieved by applying this smart dispatching approach.