This study presents the development of a multi-criteria control methodology for flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs). The control methodology is based on a two-tier decision making mechanism. The first tier is designed to select a dominant decision criterion using a rule-based algorithm. In the second tier, using a look-a-head multi-pass simulation, a scheduling rule that best advances the sel...

In this paper, a general approach is proposed for the computation of a liveness enforcing supervisor for the Petri net model of a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) prone to deadlocks. The proposed method is applicable to a lot of PN classes. A global sink/source place (GP) is used temporarily in the design steps and is finally removed when the liveness of the system is achieved. The aim is to...

This paper deals with the definition of a general approach to the modeling and control specification of Flexible Manufacturing Systems. The development and the analysis of complex FMS models can greatly benefit from the automatic synthesis of the complete models and the availability of a graphic tool to describe them in a concise way. The automatic synthesis helps the designer to succeed in the...

A common method of dynamically scheduling jobs in Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs) is to employ scheduling rules. However, the problem associated with this method is that the performance of the rules depends on the state of the system, but there is no rule that is superior to all the others for all the possible states the system might be in. It would therefore be highly desirable to employ...

A flexible manufacturing system is a high automated GT machine cell, consisting of a group of processing workstations (usually CNC machine tools), interconnected by an automated material handling and storage system, and controlled by a distributed computer system. The reason the FMS is called flexible is that it is capable of processing a variety of diffrent part styles simultaneously at the va...

Weighted Petri nets are common tools for modeling and validating discrete event systems involving resource allocation, such as flexible manufacturing (FMSs). A subclass of weighted called a system sequential with shared resources (S 4 R) has the power complex FMSs where execution an operation ma...

Competitiveness and rapid expansion of flexible manufacturing system (FMS) as one of the industrial alternatives has attracted many practitioners’ and academicians’ interest. Recent globalization events have further encouraged FMS development into distributed, self-reliant units of production center. The flexible manufacturing system in distributed system (FMSDS) considers multi-factory environ...

This research explores the appropriateness of unbalancing the workload per machine in certain types of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) configured as pooled machines of unequal sizes. Studies are conducted to examine the applicability of following an objective to unbalance workloads when solving the FMS planning problems of selecting part types to be machined together and determining their...