INTELLIGENT DISPATCHING FOR FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING

A decision rule for real-time dispatching of parts, each of which may have alternative processing possibilities, has been developed and tested in a simulated flexible manufacturing system. A part, upon completion of an operation, is not routed to a specific machine, but is, in effect, sent to a general queue. Thus, a machine has a global option for choosing parts which in turn may be processed on alternative machines. For effective use of the system's routeing flexibility under these circumstances, the machine needs an intelligent part-selection strategy (rather than shallow heuristics represented by the conventional dispatching rules) that takes into account the current state and trends of the system. The proposed intelligent reasoning procedure has been found to achieve better shop performance than some of the popular dispatching rules, the improved performance being due to the ability to respond to changing circumstances.