Modeling of a tool shared flexible manufacturing system

This research investigates the impact of control rules for tool selection and initial work release on the performance of a manufacturing system in a tool shared environment. A "look ahead" policy was used to determine the requirement of tools. Various rules for tool sharing were studied with makespan and tool transporter utilization as performance measures. Makespan of a schedule is defined as the time required to complete all jobs in a given batch. Impact of tool duplication, i.e., availability of multiple copies of tools in the system was also addressed. Simulation was used for modeling the system. Design of experiments techniques were used to analyze simulation outputs. The analysis of results indicated certain request selection rules resulted in increased system performance, while initial work release rules had no impact on the system.