Priority Scheduling for a Flexible Job Shop with a Reconfigurable Manufacturing Cell

This paper considers a scheduling problem in a flexible job shop with a reconfigurable manufacturing cell. The flexible job shop has both operation and routing flexibilities, which can be represented in the form of a multiple process plan, i.e. each part can be processed through alternative operations, each of which can be processed on alternative machines. The scheduling problem has three decision variables: (a) selecting operation/machine pairs for each part; (b) sequencing of parts to be fed into the reconfigurable manufacturing cell; and (c) sequencing of the parts assigned to each machine. Due to the reconfigurable manufacturing cell’s ability of adjusting the capacity, functionality and flexibility to the desired levels, the priority scheduling approach is proposed in which the three decisions are made at the same time by combining operation/machine selection rules, input sequencing rules and part sequencing rules. To show the performances of various rule combinations, simulation experiments were done on various instances generated randomly using the experiences of the manufacturing experts, and the results are reported for the objectives of minimizing makespan, mean flow time and mean tardiness, respectively.