MACHINE LOADING IN FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS CONSIDERING ROUTEING FLEXIBILITY

The key competitive strength of a manufacturing system lies in its fle xibility, which represents the ability to respond effectively to chang ing circumstances. Flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) react appropr iately to change. The relevance of a particular type of flexibility de pends upon the system and problem being considered. In this paper, the machine loading problem in a flexible manufacturing system is address ed. The loading problem is concerned with the allocation of part opera tions and required tools to the machines, so as to optimise some objec tive(s) subject to some technological constraints. Several objectives have been considered in the past such as maximisation of the utilisati on of resources, minimisation of processing and tooling costs and maxi misation of throughput rates. In such procedures, it is quire probable that a rigid loading schedule is obtained and in cases of machine bre akdowns and tool failures alternate routeings are often not available. Therefore, in this paper, we develop a mathematical model which consi ders maximisation of the production routeings available for the parts and hence increases the routeing flexibility. The model is illustrated by examples.