The paper presents a software package developed for the integration of a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) with the CAD department. The software package is able to make the informational link between a CAD system, a CAM program and the control system of CNC machines (file transfer and translation).

The increased use of flexible manufacturing systems to efficiently provide customers with diversified products has created a significant set of operational challenges for managers. Many issues concerning procedures and policies for the day-to-day operation of these systems are still unresolved. Previous studies in this area have concentrated on various problems by isolating or simplifying the s...

This paper describes the development of an agent-based framework for the intelligent control of flexible manufacturing systems. An FMS is a complex manufacturing system, in which the control system is responsible for the planning, control and monitoring functions. Traditionally, manufacturing systems are commonly established with hierarchical control architecture. This approach is not flexible ...

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) are distinguished by the use of computer control in place of the hard automation usually found in transfer lines. The high investment required for a FMS and the potential of FMS as a strategic competitive tool make it attractive to engage in research in this area. This paper presents a review of literature concerning the operations aspect of FMS. Articles em...

This paper surveys recent works on queuing approaches to a number of optimization problems in production systems, especially modem jobbing production systems (or multi-item small lot production systems) represented by flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). This paper outlines optimization problems concerning with such aspects of the system design and control as workioading, job selection, produc...

The aim of this paper is to present a hybrid group decision model for evaluating flexible manufacturing systems(FMSs), in which the information about attribute weights is completely unknown, and the attribute values take the form of triangular fuzzy numbers. In this proposed methodology, the voting method is adopted to calculate the attribute weights by aggregating the decision-makers’ attitude...

The paper presents a software package developed fo the integration of a Flexible Manufacturing Syste (FMS) with the CAD department. The software package is able to make the informational link between a CAD system, a CAM program and the control system of CNC machines (file transfer and

A methodology is presented for the dynamic scheduling of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs). A two-level control hierarchy is suggested. The higher level is used for determining a dominant decision criterion and relevant scheduling rules, based on an analysis of the actual shop status. The lower level uses simulation for determining the best scheduling policy to be selected. Simulation is us...

In practical manufacturing settings it is often possible to obtain, in real-time, information about the operation of several machines in a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) that can be quite useful in scheduling part flows. In this brief paper the authors introduce some scheduling policies that can effectively utilize such information (something the policies in [1] do not do) and they provide...

Material handling equipment plays an important role in the design and development of advance manufacturing systems (AMS) like flexible manufacturing systems. Material handling equipments affects the performance and productivity of these advance manufacturing systems. So it becomes very important to select a right kind of equipment while designing the high end manufacturing systems like FMS. In ...