Flexible manufacturing system structural control and the Neighborhood Policy, part 2. Generalization, optimization, and efficiency

In the first of this pair of papers, the Neighborhood Policy was shown to be a correct and scalable Structural Control Policy (SCP). Operating constraints that guarantee deadlock-free flexible manufacturing system (FMS) operation are generated based on machine capacity. For some systems these constraints appear to be quite conservative. This paper generalizes the Neighborhood Policy so that many different SCPs can be generated for the same FMS configuration. A method of finding permissive neighborhood systems is then developed. Finally, SCP efficiency is defined and investigated for Capacity-Based and Optimal Neighborhood Policies.