A study of scheduling rules of flexible manufacturing systems: A simulation approach

This study examines the effects of scheduling rules on the performance of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs). Several machine and automated guided vehicle (AGV) scheduling rules are tested against the mean flowtime criterion. In general, scheduling rules are widely used in practice ranging from direct applications as a stand-alone scheduling scheme to indirect application as a part of complicated scheduling systems. In this paper, we compare the rules under various experimental conditions by using an FMS simulation model. Our objective is to measure sensitivity of the rules to changes in processing time distributions, various levels of breakdown rates, and types of AGV priority schemes. A comprehensive bibliography is also presented in the paper.