Real-Time Selection of Process Plan in Flexible Manufacturing Systems: Simulation Study

This paper presents the results of a simulation study of a typical flexible manufacturing system (FMS) that has routing flexibility. The objective in this study is to test the effectiveness of the modified dissimilarity maximization method (modified DMM) for real time FMS scheduling. modified DMM method is an improvement of the DMM method. Modified DMM method is an alternative process plan selection method developed for routing selection in real time FMS scheduling. A computer simulation model, which mimics a physical system, is used to evaluate the effect of DMM and Modified DMM rules on the system performance. The typical FMS employed in this study includes seven machining centres, a loading and unloading area, and six different part types. The part type has alternative routings because of the existence of identical machining centre in the system. The DMM and Modified DMM are used for selecting an incoming part and later routing it to a machining centre for its next operation. The result show that the Modified DMM outperforms DMM on system throughput in saturation case, increases utilization of the machines and increases utilization of the handling system.