A part release scheme in single-stage multimachine systems

In current manufacturing environments, manufacturing orders are often chara cterized by unstable market demand, short product life cycles, varieties of products, and short production lead times. In order to fulfil such manufac turing orders, a recent trend in flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) is to use versatile machines with fast tool delivery devices. In contrast to a c onventional FMS that mainly focuses on part flows, tool flow control is imp ortant in single-stage multimachine systems (SSMS), which consist of versat ile macines and fast tool delivery devices. This study proposes a part rele ase scheme for SSMS, which considers the projected tool competition at the part release stage. This scheme can be applied to a real environment to imp rove system performance. The effectiveness of the scheme is demonstrated th rough a series of simulation experiments. Iterpretations of the results are also presented.