Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing, 1997:
Proceedings of the Seventh International FAIM Conference

ISBN Print: 978-1-56700-089-4

ISBN Online: 978-1-56700-442-7

COPING WITH DISTURBANCES A PERFORMANCE EVALUATION APPROACH IN VIRTUAL MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENTS

DOI: 10.1615/FAIM1997.10
pages 1-12

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to report on an extensive investigation of one of the important problems that is frequently encountered during the operation of manufacturing system, the system's ability to make an appropriately balanced and rapid response to predictable and unpredictable changes. In this work this is termed as manufacturing "Responsiveness" and is considered as one of the major attributes success and profitability of manufacturing systems. The focus of the investigation is the "Responsiveness" of machining environments. Simulation is used to represent a machining facility belonging to a large industrial company and generic capability units termed Resource Elements (REs) are developed and used for representing the machining facilities as a set of virtual resources. The reported results show that significant improvements in manufacturing system performances and responsiveness can be achieved when a system is represented and scheduled using the proposed methodology.