EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVE TOOL COMBINATIONS IN A FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) are often viewed as systems capa ble of processing a wide variety of parts in random order. The extent to which this is achieved is determined by the number of tools of each type that are active in the system at the same time. Too few tools ca n result in low system utilization and throughput. Too many tools in t he system, however, can increase system cost. A continuous-time Markov chain model and an accompanying cost model are presented in this pape r as an analytical means of examining the interrelationships between t he number of tools and system performance and evaluating alternative t ool combinations. A numerical example is given to illustrate the inter relationships and test the sensitivity of the model. Because of the la rge number of equations required to be solved, a computer program was written to obtain the results.