A production scheduling system modeling approach based on virtual manufacturing cells

Cellular manufacturing is an effective approach to improve production flexibility and efficiency in today´s production environment of small lot-size and multi-species. A production scheduling system modeling approach based on virtual manufacturing cells is proposed in this paper. Object-oriented architecture is adopted in system design. Production jobs are grouped into virtual manufacturing cells. Taking manufacturing cells as management units, by analyzing scheduling tasks in cells and using current scheduling methods, the complexity of production scheduling problem can be reduced, and based on this, a dynamic production scheduling system is designed accordingly.