WASA: A decision support system for workstations arrangement in single-vehicle closed-loop AGV systems

A decision support system named WASA was developed in this study to examine the problem of arrangement of workstations in a single-vehicle closed-loop (SVCL) AGV system when the exact facility layout has not been determined. We assume that a set of discrete locations available for facility layout have been identified, and the methods to determine a workstation sequence to support layout decisions are proposed. The arrangement of workstations in this study is done in two steps. First, a non-duplicate workstation sequence is constructed based on the product visitation sequence of various types of products produced in the system. Then, the workstation sequence is used to determine the placement of workstations in the SVCL layout based on the design parameter specified. The user of the system is allowed to change some design parameters to create alternative layouts. Finally, a simulation experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed solution methods and to identify design parameters that might affect the system performance.