Responsiveness of decision-making approaches towards the performance of FMS

Abstract

Flexible Manufacturing systems (FMS) are the systems possessing high complexity in design and operation. It is due to the fact that the FMS consists of machines with high flexibility that can process a variety of jobs in a number of machines. Basically, such systems are used for the batch production process. In aerospace industries where a batch production process is adopted, FMS has found a wide range of application there. It is evident that due to such highly flexible and complicated systems the shop floor control of the FMS becomes quite a difficult task. Hence, there is a need of a decision-making approach which can ensure a proper control of the systems. The decision-making approaches refers to taking of the right decision at the right time regarding the planning, scheduling, dispatching and certain decisions related to disturbances in shop floor like urgent job arrivals, tool failure and machine breakdown. The proper decision making ensures a proper operation of the FMS, but due to such complex configuration, the decision-making in such systems becomes quite a challenging task. Hence, to execute it properly the decision-making activity consists of various steps like collection of data from the shop floor, appealing the decisionmaking activity, evaluation of the alternatives, finding the best alternative among them and finally the execution of the decisions. This paper deals with the theory behind the various decisionmaking approaches that are used for the FMS control. A detailed analysis is done and various situations are generated and its effects are studied. A real-time FMS problem is solved by using various decision-making approaches and its simulation is done by using ARENA simulation software. The results are finally analyzed and compared to see the changes of the effects of the decision making with that one where no such decision-making approaches are used. Finally, the graphical interpretation is done for the results.