THE APPLICATION AND EVALUATION OF BANKERS ALGORITHM FOR DEADLOCK-FREEBUFFER SPACE ALLOCATION IN FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

Deadlock-free operation is essential for operating highly automated ma nufacturing systems. The seminal deadlock avoidance procedure, Banker' s algorithm, was developed for computer operating systems, an environm ent where very little information regarding the future resource requir ements of executing processes is known. Manufacturing researchers have tended to dismiss Banker's algorithm as too conservative in the manuf acturing environment where future resource requirements are well defin ed by part routes. In this work, we investigate this issue by developi ng variants of Banker's algorithm applicable to buffer space allocatio n in flexible manufacturing. We show that these algorithms are not ove rly conservative and that, indeed, Banker's approach can provide very good operational flexibility when properly applied to the manufacturin g environment.