Article ID: | iaor200669 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 16 |
Issue: | 3 |
Start Page Number: | 251 |
End Page Number: | 275 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2004 |
Journal: | International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems |
Authors: | Caprihan Rahul, Wadhwa Subhash, Kumar Satish |
Keywords: | scheduling, simulation: applications |
Manufacturing systems with varying levels and types of flexibility employ alternative scheduling strategies to exploit flexibility for performance enhancement. Scheduling decisions in manufacturing systems are influenced by time delays due to information handling activities such as information collection, transfer, and processing. More specifically, scheduling strategies implicitly involve information intensive activities that may entail significant time delays for implementation, depending on the extant shop floor automation and integration within a flexible system. These are information delays and we believe that most contemporary flexible systems must inherently cope with some level of information delay when implementing on-line scheduling strategies. This paper conceptualizes the manifestaton of information delays in the context of scheduling decisions within flexible systems through the definition of three key modes: (i) Mode 1 information-transfer delay; (ii) Mode 2 decision-implementation delay; and (iii) Mode 3 status-review delay. We then stress the need and importance of devising suitable on-line scheduling strategies for countering the effect of information delays by demonstrating the efficacy of a novel scheduling strategy on a single machine. While opening a new scheduling dimension with potential research ramifications, this paper highlights the fact that the concept of information delay can effectively capture the synergism issues related with flexibility, integration, and automation in the context of scheduling decisions within semi-automated flexible systems.