Effect of sequencing flexibility on the performance of flexibility enabled manufacturing system

This paper focuses on a simulation-based experimental study of the interaction among sequencing flexibility, part sequencing rules, system capacity and system load conditions in a typical flexibility enabled manufacturing system. Four different situations are considered for experimentation. These are four sequencing flexibility levels, four system capacity levels, four system load conditions and four sequencing rules. The performance of the system is evaluated using various measures related to makespan time, average resource utilisation and work-in-process. Simulation experiments are designed on the basis of Taguchi principle. The simulation results so obtained are subjected to statistical analysis. The analysis of results reveals that the system performance can be improved by incorporating sequencing flexibility. However, the benefits of sequencing flexibility reduce at higher level of flexibility. There is also the impact of system capacity and system load condition on the performance of the system. Part sequencing rules such as shortest processing time provide better performance than other rules for all the flexibility levels.