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Tool reliability is one of the most important issues in a flexible manufacturing system. If a tool fails to operate correctly, the performance of the manufacturing system is reduced, the due date may be violated, or the product quality falls behind the standards. This paper develops a bi-objective mathematical model for tool selection in a flexible manufacturing system in order to optimize both reliability and cost. The tools in these environments are considered to have increasing failure rates as they are used over time; a case closer to reality. This paper aims to evaluate the availability of different tools used in a production system, in which the reliability of a tool is dependent on... 

In this paper, optimal production and maintenance planning of a flexible manufacturing system under a time variant demand is considered. There is a preventive maintenance plan to reduce the failure rate of the machine. It is assumed that the failure rate of the machine is a function of its age and its maintenance rate. It is, also, assumed that the demand of the manufacturing product is time dependent and its rate depends on the level of the advertisement on that product, The objective is to maximize the expected discounted total profit of the firm over an infinite time horizon. To solve this optimization problem, first, an optimal control is characterized by a set of Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman... 

We describe an intelligent co-simulator for real time production control of a complex flexible manufacturing system (CFMS) having machine and tool flexibility. The manufacturing processes associated with the CFMS are complicated with each operation being possibly done by several machining centers. The co-simulator design approach is built upon the theory of dynamic meta-model based supervisory control with the cooperation of its own embedded intelligent blocks. The system is implemented by coupling of the centralized simulation controller (CSC) and real-time simulator for enforcing dynamic strategies of shop floor control. The posteriori adaptive co-simulator is equipped with a concurrent... 

A flexible flow shop is a generalized flow shop with multiple machines in some stages. This system is fairly common in flexible manufacturing and in process industry. In most practical environments, scheduling is an ongoing reactive process where the presence of real time information continually forces reconsideration of pre-established schedules. This paper studies a flexible flow shop system considering non-deterministic and dynamic arrival of jobs and also sequence dependent setup times. The problem objective is to determine a schedule that minimizes average tardiness of jobs. Since the problem class is NP-hard, a novel dispatching rule and hybrid genetic algorithm have been developed to... 

One of the major issues related to parallel kinematic machine tools (PKMs) is their structural dependency on their configuration. In this paper, the machine configuration effect on its stability is investigated for the case of a Hexaglide machine tool. An FEM model of the Hexaglide machine tool is developed. The frequency response function (FRF) at the tool tip is obtained by a modal analysis. The numerical results are validated through comparison with those of an experimental modal test. The pose dependency of the PKM stability over its workspace is investigated. It is shown that the machine stability over the workspace is dependent on the spindle/tool/holder system characteristic. For... 

Reliability of machinery and equipment in flexible manufacturing systems are among the most important issues to reduce production costs and to increase efficiency. This paper investigates the reliability of machinery in job shop production systems, where materials, parts, and other production needs are handled by automated guided vehicles (AGV). The failures time of the parallel machines in a given shop follow either an exponential or a Weibull distribution. As there is no closed-form equation to calculate the reliability of the shop in the Weibull case, a simulation approach is taken in this paper to estimate the reliability. Then, a bi-objective nonlinear optimization model is developed... 

The simultaneous planning of the production and the maintenance in a flexible manufacturing system is considered in this paper. The manufacturing system is composed of one machine that produces a single product. There is a preventive maintenance plan to reduce the failure rate of the machine. This paper is different from the previous researches in this area in two separate ways. First, the failure rate of the machine is supposed to be a function of its age. Second, we assume that the demand of the manufacturing product is time dependent and its rate depends on the level of advertisement on that product. The objective is to maximize the expected discounted total profit of the firm over an... 

In this paper, we have developed a production planning and marketing model in unreliable flexible manufacturing systems with inconstant demand rate that its rate depends on the level of advertisement on that product. The proposed model is more realistic and useful from a practical point of view. The flexible manufacturing system is composed of two machines that produce a single product. Markovian models frequently have been used in modeling a wide variety of real-world systems under uncertainties. Therefore, in this paper, the inventory balance equation is represented by a continuous-time model with Markov jump process to take into account machines breakdown. The objective is to minimize the... 

We propose an approach for finding an optimal path in a flexible jobshop manufacturing system considering two criteria of time and cost. With rise in demands, advancement in technology, and increase in production capacity, the need for more shops persists. Therefore, a flexible jobshop system has more than one shop with the same duty. The difference among shops with the same duty is in their machines with various specifications. A network is configured in which the nodes are considered to be the shops with arcs representing the paths among the shops. An Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) functions as a material handling device through the manufacturing network. To account for uncertainty, we... 

In the application of parallel kinematic machine tools (PKM), because of errors in the geometric parameters, it is necessary to calibrate the PKM to improve the positioning accuracy. In existing self-calibration methods, either some redundant sensors on passive joints or some mobility constraints on the kinematic chains are used. However, the mobility constraints imposed on kinematic chains might apply large forces during the test on legs and passive joints. Also, these kinds of calibrating are applicable only on PKMs in which their actuated joints can be used as passive joints. To overcome weaknesses of existing methods, a novel approach to calibration based on imposing position constraints... 

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) should be able to respond to changing manufacturing requirements and environments. From the layout point of view, FMS need to be rearranged to fit the new requirements. However, rearranging the layout is often undesirable due to its unpredicted high costs and production disruption. This paper proposes a practical approach to mitigate the effects and repercussions of changing environments and avoid rearranging the layout. A robust layout approach is presented, where changes in product demand and mix are absorbed by altering product routes and not rearranging the layout. In this approach, the problem is decomposed into two sub-problems: sub-problem 1 (SP1)...