title: Evaluation of combined dispatching and routeing strategies for a flexible manufacturing system
abstract: This paper deals with the evaluation of combined dispatching and routeing strategies on the performance of a flexible manufacturing system. Three routeing policies - no alternative routings, alternative routeing dynamics and alternative routeing plans - are considered with four dispatching rules with finite buffer capacity. In addition, the effect of changing part mix ratios is also discussed. The performance measures considered are makespan, average machine utilization, average flow time and average delay at local input buffers. Simulation results indicate that the alternative routings dynamic policy gives the best results in three performance measures except for average delay at local input buffers. Further, the effect of changing part mix ratios is not significant
keyphrases: flexible manufacturing system alternative routings dispatching rules finite buffer capacity part mix ratios average flow time FMS