The industry 4.0 concepts are moving towards flexible and energy efficient factories. Major flexible production lines use battery-based automated guided vehicles (AGVs) to optimize their handling processes. However, optimal AGV battery management can significantly shorten lead times. In this paper, we address the scheduling problem in an AGV-based job-shop manufacturing facility. The considered schedule concerns three strands: jobs affecting machines, product transport tasks’ allocations and AGV fleet battery management. The proposed model supports outcomes expected from Industry 4.0 by increasing productivity through completion time minimization and optimizing energy by managing battery replenishment. Experimental tests were conducted on extended benchmark literature instances to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed approach.

In job-shop manufacturing systems, an efficient production schedule acts to reduce unnecessary costs and better manage resources. For the same purposes, modern manufacturing cells, in compliance with industry 4.0 concepts, use material handling systems in order to allow more control on the transport tasks. In this paper, a job-shop scheduling problem in vehicle based manufacturing facility that is mainly related to job assignment to resources is addressed. The considered job-shop production cell has two types of resources: processing resources that accomplish fabrication tasks for specific products, and transporting resources that assure parts’ transport to the processing area. A Variable Neighborhood Search algorithm is used to schedule product manufacturing and handling tasks in the aim to minimize the maximum completion time of a job set and an improved lower bound with new calculation method is presented. Experimental tests are conducted to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed approach.