This paper investigates the use of a graphic notation and a Petri Net (PN) modular approach for the modelling of Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs). The development and the analysis of complex FMS models can greatly beneet from the automatic synthesis of the complete models and the availability of a graphic tool to describe them in a concise way. The automatic synthesis helps the designer to...

Manufacturing flexibility is one of the key determinants of development of modern production systems. The article presents the importance of flexibility factor in the process of manufacturing systems development during the 20 th century. In particular, craft manufacturing, dedicated manufacturing systems (DMS) and flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) were characterized. Finally, actual problems...

The changes in manufacturing systems and industrial structure brought about by the development of new, computer-based flexible technologies has been a subject of growing debate during the last decade. There is a lack of solid empirical support for almost all hypotheses developed in this debate since data on the relative use of various manufacturing systems are not available for an econometric a...

Genetic algorithms (GAs) are stochastic search techniques based on the concepts of natural population genetics for exploring a huge solution space in identifying optimal or near optimal solutions (Davis, 1991)(Holland, 1992)(Reeves & Rowe, 2003), and are more likely able to avoid the local optima problem than traditional gradient based hill-climbing optimization techniques when solving complex ...

In the present investigation, we develop queueing model for the performance prediction of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) with a multiple discrete material-handling devices (MHD). An iterative method has been suggested using mean value analysis (MVA) for the state-dependent routing. Two queueing network models are considered to determine the material-handling device interference. In the f...

This paper presents a minimalist approach to flexible manufacturing systems application interfacing using network wrappers. Through this approach, CIM system applications can be ported to distributed systems more easily. The environment of this implementation is the PUCRS flexible manufacturing cell. The main objective of the project first stage is the integration of production management appli...

The task of scheduling in flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) is more complex and problematic than a traditional manufacturing systems. To accomplish great performance for FMS, a good scheduling system should make an accurate decision at an accurate time according to system situations. Fuzzy logic methodologies easily deal with indeterminate and incomplete information. Human expert‟s knowledge...