SCHEDULING IN RECONFIGURABLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

Abstract

Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS) has been introduced in manufacturing environment so as to achieve objective of reacting quickly to changes in market demand in a cost effective way. Reconfigurable Machine Tools (RMT) are the major component of this system. Different configurations are needed to cope with the large fluctuations in product demand and mix caused by the new market conditions. Along with the design and development of the reconfigurable machine tools there is also a need to design a system which can accommodate these components and is also able to achieve the desired output from the system. For this purpose the work has been focused on designing a mathematical model to address the issue related to scheduling of parts on an RMT and also to find the sequence of reconfiguration for an RMT. The manufacturing environment with multiple parts scenario is subjected to different constraints such as delivery commitments and availability of the resources to develop the mathematical model for scheduling approach in RMS. A case study has been solved to gain a better insight into the effectiveness of the mathematical model to generate schedule in RMS. To solve the problem which is of complex nature, use of Search Algorithms has reported to be effective. Hence the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Non-Linear Programming (NLP) methods have been used as tool to derive the optimum solution. Keywords: Reconfigurable Manufacturing System (RMS), Scheduling, Genetic Algorithm (GA)