Real time scheduling and routing for Flexible Manufacturing Systems with unreliable machines

This paper presents a real time scheduling and routing algorithm for a failure prone Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS). The parts should be dispatched into the system at adequate times so as to minimize the disruptive effects of machine failures and to limit the work in process. The paper extends the work of Kimemia and Gershwin in which the scheduling problem is decomposed into a flow control problem and a discrete part dispatching problem. In the FMSs studied here, several machines may perform one operation in different lengths of time and machines may be multi-purpose. The paper proposes a new technique which reduces the flow control computation burden. Simulation results are presented.