Adaptive scheduling in flexible manufacturing systems

This paper develops an adaptive scheduling policy for flexible manufacturing systems. The inductive learning methodology used for constructing this state-dependent scheduling policy provides and understanding of the relative importance of the various system parameters in determining the appropriate scheduling rule. Experimental studies indicated the superiority of the suggested approach over the alternative approach involving the repeated application of a single scheduling rule for randomly generated test problems as well as a real system, and under both stationary and nonstationary conditions. In particular, its relative performance improves further when there are frequent disruptions, and when disruptions are caused by the introduction of tiiight due date jobs, one of the most common surces of disruptions in most manufacturing systems.