Flexible manufacturing systems and job scheduling via simulation

Customer focused market and severe competitive conditions broughtby technological developments and globalization oblige that the companieshave a more flexible and dynamic structure. Flexibility of the manufacturingcompanies depends on the flexibility of the manufacturing system. One of theleading manufacturing systems which response to the changes in demandquickly without making concession for productivity and quality is flexiblemanufacturing systems.Flexible manufacturing systems is a high costly investment for whichradical changes are impossible to be made after the installation. Therefore,for the application to be successful, system should be convenient for thestructure and the requirements of the company and the problems anddisruptions which can appear after the system begins to operate should bedetermined with the calculations made in the beginning. One of the mostimportant tools used for evaluating the manufacturing systems under variouscriteria according to many aspects and taking action against the probabledisruptions is simulation.In this study, a simulation model is developed for scheduling the jobscoming to the 1st flexible manufacturing line in Türk Traktör factory. With thissimulation model, the effect of the three different scheduling rules to thesystem performance under various criteria is searched and the fact whichscheduling rule is better than the others under which conditions isdetermined. As a result; it is found that for the 1st flexible manufacturing line,giving priority to the parts having the least operation time produces the bestresults in terms of the time in the system and the waiting time in the queues.