A real-time scheduling mechanism for a flexible manufacturing system: Using simulation and dispatching rules

This paper presents a real-time scheduling methodology which uses simulation and dispatching rules for flexible manufacturing systems. We develop a scheduling mechanism in which job dispatching rules vary dynamically based on information from discrete event simulation that is used for evaluating candidate dispatching rules. In this paper, we improve and extend previous research on simulation-based real-time scheduling by suggesting a more systematic framework for the scheduling mechanism through refinement of functions of modules in the mechanism, and by presenting and analysing various scheduling strategies used to operate the mechanism. The strategies are formed by combining two factors that might influence the performance of the mechanism: type of simulation model which is used in the mechanism and points of time when new dispatching rules are selected. In order to compare performance of the scheduling strategies, computational experiments are performed and results are reported.