Optimally locating multiple dwell points in a single loop guide path system

Dwell points for idle vehicles affect the performance of automated guided vehicle systems. An exact polynomial-time algorithm to solve idle vehicle positioning problems in both unidirectional and bidirectional single loop systems is developed to minimize the maximum response time. The proposed algorithm considers several potential locations for the first dwell point and applies a dynamic programming procedure to obtain the remaining dwell points for each initial location. The algorithm is streamlined by applying certain optimality properties. Computational results show that the algorithm can solve large-scale problems in reasonable time.