Concurrent Scheduling In Flexible Automation

Advancements in integrated automation, computers, and machine tool technology have led to the development of machines that are very versatile. Flexible automation is the computer-based integration of these versatile machines. An important operational consideration for flexible automation is the scheduling of production. The conventional approach to flexible automation scheduling is a sequential decision process that sequentially involves ( 1) the loading of resources on the machines, (2) the routing of jobs to the loaded machines, and (3) the sequencing of the jobs at each machine. In this paper, a concurrent approach is performs the above three decisions. Defining illustrative small problems, and implementing this concurrent scheduling approach on them, we show that machine utilization and productivity may be improved over the sequential approach. Furthermore, we provide a mathematical p rograrnming network heuristic that performs well on larger, problems. Its application to some actual problems in the scheduling of operational flexible manufacturing systems indicates that the approach is indeed promising.