Study the Effect of Route Penalty on FMS Considering Routing Flexibility

Abstract

This work is aimed to deepen a research theme focused on manufacturing system in a flexible environment. It is categorized by an emphasis on modeling a flexible manufacturing system involving design, planning and control decisions. The design decision comprises of manufacturing flexibility i.e., routing flexibility (RF0, RF1, RF2 and RF3), and buffer size (5, 10, 15 and 20) whereas the planning decision covers route penalty (0%, 5%, 10% and 15%) and system configuration (6 machines with dedicated input buffer) while control decision covers dispatching rule (MINQ), and sequencing rule (FCFS, SPT, HPT and LCFS). The study uses make-span as performance measures to study the impact of route penalty in different conditions. This study is focused on the interaction among various decisions in order to control the part flow effectively through the manufacturing system. It is observed that the performance of the system has marginally diminished with the increase in the %route penalty and it is also found that the %route penalty has an effect on the performance measures but this effect is more visible at higher levels of routing flexibilities in compare to the lower levels of routing flexibility. Other parameters have mixed effect on the performance measures that are discussed in the results.