SUMMARY
The objective of this paper is to describe an effective scheduling system for flexible manufacturing cells (FMC). Based on FMC characteristics, cell scheduling can be categorized for a dynamic, modified flow shop working in a real-time environment. A heuristic static cell scheduling methodology for minimizing mean flowtime is first proposed. This is then modified to allow dynamic cell scheduling to reflect the real-world situation of continuous job introduction to the cell. Computational results show that the proposed algorithms yield optimal or near optimal job sequences in a very short period of time, thus satisfying a real-time need of rapid computation.
Notes
†This paper is based on PhD research performed by D.-Y. Chan at Arizona State University: ‘Design of a scheduling system for a flexible manufacturing cell’. A complete copy of the paper may be obtained through University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.