A fuzzy dispatching strategy for due-date scheduling of FMSs with information delays

Conventional dispatching strategies for FMSs with routing flexibility have typically employed simple heuristics such as work-in-next-queue (WINQ) and number-in-next-queue (NINQ). The effectiveness of these heuristics, however, deteriorates in FMSs whose operational environment must cope with informa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of flexible manufacturing systems Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 29 - 53
Main Authors Caprihan, Rahul, Kumar, Ashok, Stecke, Kathryn E.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Boston Springer Nature B.V 01.03.2006
Subjects
Algorithms
Automation
Decision making
Flexible manufacturing systems
Fuzzy sets
Heuristic
Inventory
Manufacturing
Production planning
Routing
Scheduling
Simulation
Software
Studies
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Summary:Conventional dispatching strategies for FMSs with routing flexibility have typically employed simple heuristics such as work-in-next-queue (WINQ) and number-in-next-queue (NINQ). The effectiveness of these heuristics, however, deteriorates in FMSs whose operational environment must cope with information delays that are non-negligible in comparison to part processing times. Such delays could arise from planned activities, e.g., acquisition, selection, processing, and transfer of plant-wide system status information as well as from unplanned events such as ERP/IT system malfunctions, mismatch of software interfaces, and erroneous inventory master files, for example. Uncertainties from information delays make a strong case for the introduction of fuzzy controllers for making scheduling decisions. This paper introduces a novel fuzzy logic-based dispatching strategy to cope with a specific manifestation of information delays, called status review delay within FMSs. Status review information delays impact system performance adversely because of the obsolescent nature of the information used in the determination of dispatch decisions. A fuzzy dispatching strategy (FDS), designed specifically for deployment within FMSs where information delays are manifest, provides an appropriate alternative to conventional dispatching strategies such as WINQ and NINQ. In the design of an FDS, relevant system-based parameters are fuzzified and an appropriate rule base is designed. Simulation experiments demonstrate the superiority of an FDS over the conventional WINQ dispatching strategy using the mean tardiness, percent tardy, and mean flowtime performance measures. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
ISSN:0920-6299
1936-6582
1572-9370
1936-6590
DOI:10.1007/s10696-006-9002-4