Flexible Manufacturing Systems

A manufacturing system involves manufacturing activity which, as defined in [VN92], is “the transformation process by which raw material, labour, energy and equipment are brought together to produce high-quality goods”. A manufacturing system is composed of two main subsystems: The physical subsystem, composed of the physical resources (hardware components) such as conveyors, robots, buffers, work stations, etc. The control subsystem, also called Decision Making Subsystem (DMS) in [SV89], which determines how to use the physical subsystem in order to organise and optimise the production process.