Allowance for robot self-replication in industrial automation (Q1882020)

For the determinate and probabilistic cases of industrial automation where the technological operations are executed with probabilities 1 and less than 1, respectively, the use of the self-replicating robots are considered. It was demonstrated that in order to minimize the cost of the product, the technological operations must be either all automated or all executed manually. It is proved that in the probabilistic case there exist situations where costs can be minimized if all technological operations of a certain type must be automated for manufacturing the robots (products) and executed manually for manufacturing the products (robots).