On the real-time control of flexible manufacturing systems

Additional results in the analysis of scheduling flexible manufacturing systems using the model proposed by J.R. Perkins and P.R. Kumar (IEEE Trans. on Autom. Control, vol.34, no.2, p.139-48, Feb. 1989) are presented. The concept of idling is used to derive a new lower bound on the performance of any bounded single machine scheduling policy. A discrete-time linear system is used to compute the backlog trajectories for a class of clearing policies. An example of unbounded backlog in a network is presented, using a clear-a-fraction policy.<
>