On the Consequences of Information Delays in the Scheduling of Semi-Automated Flexible Machines |
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Authors: | Rahul Caprihan Subhash Wadhwa and Satish Kumar |
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Affiliation: | (1) Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Dayalbagh, Agra, India, 282 005;(2) Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India, 110 016;(3) Department of Physics and Computer Science, Dayalbagh Educational Institute, Dayalbagh, Agra, India, 282 005 |
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Abstract: | Manufacturing systems with varying levels and types of flexibility employ alternative scheduling strategies to exploit flexibility
for performance enhancement. Scheduling decisions in manufacturing systems are influenced by time delays due to information
handling activities such as information collection, transfer, and processing. More specifically, scheduling strategies implicitly
involve information intensive activities that may entail significant time delays for implementation, depending on the extant
shop floor automation and integration within a flexible system. These are information delays and we believe that most contemporary
flexible systems must inherently cope with some level of information delay when implementing on-line scheduling strategies.
This paper conceptualizes the manifestation of information delays in the context of scheduling decisions within flexible systems
through the definition of three key delay modes: (i) Mode 1 information-transfer delay; (ii) Mode 2 decision-implementation
delay; and (iii) Mode 3 status-review delay. We then stress the need and importance of devising suitable on-line scheduling
strategies for countering the effect of information delays by demonstrating the efficacy of a novel scheduling strategy on
a single machine. While opening a new scheduling dimension with potential research ramifications, this paper highlights the
fact that the concept of information delay can effectively capture the synergism issues related with flexibility, integration,
and automation in the context of scheduling decisions within semi-automated flexible systems. |
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Keywords: | flexibility information delays on-line scheduling strategies semi-automated flexible machines discrete event simulation |
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