Flexible Manufacturing Case Study

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1.1 Introduction To succeed in today’s trends of manufacturing environments, manufactures have to modify their operations to obtain a better and faster response with the continuous changing market demands. Flexible Manufacturing System emerged as a powerful tool one due to its large flexibility, which is essential to stay competitive in this highly excellent environment. Flexible Manufacturing System is a complex system consisting components like machine equipment tool, material handling system (AGV), storage and retrieval system. Flexible Manufacturing System scheduling problems are more complex, since the jobs are highly interrelated and in addition have multiple job types and alternative routings. Accordingly, an FMS is designed to produce …show more content…

FMS is a system that consists of numerous automated machine tools connected by an automated material handling system. Shorter lead times, meeting demand fluctuations, handling volume and variety, reduction in space and people and obtaining better control due to automation as in Fig. 1(a). FMS is larger than the flexible manufacturing cell, not only in the no. of workstations and floor area it may contain, but also in the number of supporting stations and equipment in the system, such as part/pallet washing stations, co-ordinate measuring machine equipments, storage stations and so on. Computer control system is also more sophisticated; this type of functions not found in the flexible manufacturing cell such as diagnostics and tool monitoring during the machining operations. The main disadvantage is that the initial installing cost and operational costs are high and it is necessary to have enough volumes to justify the use of …show more content…

The central control computer system which controls material movements and machine flow. The generation of each part or work – piece will oblige an alternate mix of assembling hubs. Development of parts starting with one hub then onto the next is done through the material handling system (MHS). Onward the end of part preparing, the finished parts will be steered to an automatic inspection hub, and in this manner emptied from the Flexible Manufacturing System. In the present business situation the competitiveness of any the aggressiveness of any assembling industry is controlled by its capacity to react rapidly to the quickly changing business and to create the great items easily. Essential objective of any manufacturing industry to accomplished the high level of throughput, ability to respond efficiently according to the changing demands of the consumers. System utilization computed as a percentage of the available times (number of the machines accessible for generation reproduced by the quantity of changing so as to work hours), it can be increased by changing in plant layout, by diminishing exchange time between two stations and throughput, defined as the number of parts delivered by the last machine of a manufacturing system over a given duration of time; Groover, M. P., (2008)

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