An applicable strategy for scheduling optimization in multi-stage flexible manufacturing

A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a manufacturing system in which there is some amount of flexibility that allows the system to react in the case of changes, whether predicted or unpredicted. Among various dimensions of flexibility, this paper focuses on two aspects: process and product. An applicable optimization strategy based on finite-state automata model is given to schedule both process flow and product sequence by two-step algorithm. First, the benefit tree is introduced to search the optimal path among multiple choices of manufacturing process. Second, a heuristic algorithm based on lower bound value is adopted to find a close-optimal solution for product sequence on existing production flow. A permutation flow-shop environment indicates a high feasibility of this strategy on plant-level discrete manufacturing management with both high flexibility in production procedures and variety of products.