Exploiting parallel processing and optimal paths in a flexible manufacturing system

Rapid changes on the goods market take place today. These changes require an increased flexibility of the production systems in order to quickly adapt the manufacturing system to a new model of product. However, increasing the flexibility usually also increases the complexity of the system, and therefore the costs per part produced. The challenge is to develop control strategies capable to increase the productivity of a production system, while maintaining the associated costs as low as possible. We propose a control strategy capable of responding to this challenge. Using multitasking programming and optimization of the materials' travel between different points of the flexible manufacturing system, we implement a controller capable to reduce the lead time by up to 26.3%, which leads to an increase of the system's productivity by up to 34%. The control strategy proposed will increase the productivity; moreover no interventions on the hardware systems are required. The strategy also reduces the manufacturing cost per part since the productivity increases.