An integrated approach for loading, routeing, and scheduling in flexible manufacturing systems

An integrated design approach is proposed to deal with the problems on machine loading, process routeing, and production scheduling in flexible manufacturing systems. The proposed method consists of the four modules: loading module, routeing module, scheduling module, and simulation module. A group technology (GT) based heuristic approach is used in the loading module. A graph theoretic approach is employed in the routeing module to determine the effective process routeing that minimizes the number of transfer among machines for each part. In the scheduling module, minimizing both the make span and the number of tardy jobs are considered as the scheduling objectives. Several heuristics are proposed in conjunction with the traditional dispatching rules. Simulation module is implemented in an object-oriented programming environment to evaluate the strategies obtained in the loading module, routeing module, and scheduling module. Experimental results are also given to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach