GENERATION AND VALIDATION OF FMS TEST PROTOTYPES

Due to unavailability of sufficiently large problem sets, the FMS rese archers have mostly limited their studies to specific systems. It is, therefore, not possible to generalize the results of these studies. Tw o sets of test problems with identical system characteristics give sta tistically similar performance values, if the systems follow identical operation scheduling rules. This helps in generation of test prototyp es for many systems. This paper proposes a method to generate a set of test problems (prototypes) for FMS with known system characteristics. These test prototypes will help in generalization of scheduling resea rch findings and selection of FMS.