A Critical Review of Machine Loading Problem in Flexible Manufacturing System

Abstract

Production planning is the foremost task for manufacturing firms to deal with, especially adopting Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) as the manufacturing strategy for production seeking an optimal balance between productivity-flexibility requirements. Production planning in FMS provides a solution to problems regarding part type selection: machine grouping, production ratio, resource allocation and loading problem. These problems need to be solved optimally for maximum utilization of resources. Optimal solution to these problems has been a focus of attention in production and manufacturing, industrial and academic research since a number of decades. Evolution of new optimization techniques, software, technology, machines and computer languages provides the scope of a better optimal solution to the existing problems. Thus there remains a need of research to solve the problem with latest tools and techniques for higher optimal use of available resources. As an objective, the researchers need to reduce the computational time and cost, complexity of the problem, solution approach viz. general or customized, better user friendly communication with machine, higher freedom to select the desired objective(s) type(s) for optimal solution to the problem. As an approach to the solution to the problem, a researcher first needs to go for an exhaustive literature review, where the researcher needs to find the research gaps, compare and analyze the tools and techniques used, number of objectives considered for optimization and need, and scope of research for the research problem. The present study is a review paper analyzing the research gaps, approach and techniques used, scope of new optimization techniques or any other research, objectives considered and validation approaches for loading problems of production planning in FMS.