Interval robotic cells with several processing stages (chambers) have been increasingly used for diverse wafer fabrication processes in semi-conductor manufacturing. Processes such as low-pressure chemical vapor deposition, etching, cleaning and chemical-mechanical planarization, require strict...

This article considers the problems of scheduling operations in single-gripper and dual-gripper bufferless robotic cells in which the arrangement of machines is circular. The cells are designed to produce identical parts under the free-pickup criterion with additive intermachine travel time. The...

This article considers the scheduling of flow shops with a common server that performs all material handling, including the transfer of parts between machines, in the context of robotic cell flow shops. Specifically, the first analytic study of the operations of a robotic cell in which one...

We consider the problem of scheduling n tasks on two identical parallel processors. Task i has a processing time of one time unit, but might have to undergo processing for a second time unit with probability p_i, i.e., the processing time distributions of the tasks have mass only on one and on...

We consider stochastic models for flow shops, job shops and open shops in which the work required by job j is the same at each machine, being a random variable W_j. Because machines operate at different speeds, S_i, the processing time of job j at machine i is W_j/S_i,. It is the main result of this...