Effective metaheuristic and rescheduling strategies for the multi-AGV scheduling problem with sudden failure

This paper investigates a novel scheduling problem, the multi-AGV scheduling problem with sudden failure (MASP-SF), which is of great importance in modern intelligent manufacturing systems. The problem considers how to assign tasks to multiple AGVs with the objective of minimizing the total cost under two events of normal production and sudden failure in the workshop. In the event of normal production, a population-based variable neighborhood search (PVNS) algorithm with effective strategies such as rule-based stochastic method in the initialization stage, pancake flipping strategy in the shaking stage, improved neighborhood structures in the variable neighborhood descent stage is presented to solve the multi-AGV scheduling problem. In the event of sudden failure, a mixed-integer linear programming model and two rescheduling strategies are proposed to solve MASP-SF. The two rescheduling strategies are the rapid repair rescheduling strategy and a rescheduling strategy based on an improved NNH. To validate the above ideas, we conduct comprehensive and in-depth experiments on a practical plant and statistical analysis of the resulting data. The results show that the scheduling solutions generated by the rescheduling strategies are feasible, and the proposed PVNS algorithm has a superior performance compared to existing algorithms in multi-AGV scheduling problem.