Scheduling flow shop manufacturing systems considering agility issues

Abstract

Agile manufacturing is concerned with responding quickly to customer needs and market changes while still controlling costs and quality. Although several studies have been conducted in agile manufacturing, the scheduling of agile systems still needs further exploration. The objective of this paper is to provide good scheduling and rescheduling strategies that help in achieving agility and increasing its level in hybrid flexible flow shop manufacturing systems. This paper considers different agility factors including product volumes, types, and delivery, and proposes an index for measuring agility. In addition, it provides a numerical example to illustrate how the proposed scheduling strategies are applied to a production system. A simulation model is used to demonstrate the effect of the proposed scheduling and rescheduling strategies on the agility and the performance of a production system. Results have shown that the agility and the performance of the production system have significantly improved when applying the proposed scheduling strategies.