Sequence planning and optimization of production systems

This thesis mainly concerns the further development of Sequence Planner (SP), a tool used for verification and optimization of operation sequences.The work was conducted on a virtual robotic production cell (at Volvo Cars) modeled in the virtual commissioning software Process Simulate (PS).A way to handle more complex robot sequences and other resources, such as fixtures was also developed in this project.Sequence Planner is now capable of importing and modeling the robots as well as some fixtures from the virtual PS model.The SP model can be manually modified and added to, whereafter it can be verified by means of supervisory control theory, ensuring a non-blocking and deadlock free system.Using constraint programming, a set of feasible operation sequences can be produced and sorted according to their total execution time.The sequences can then be sent back to the virtual commissioning tool for further testing and verification.