The dramatic expansion in the global manufacturing market has created a demand for small and medium enterprise (SME) to apply the advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). The flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is considered as a highly competitive manufacturing strategy to ensure the success of the enterprises in the developing countries. The implementation of FMS, however, is an intractable task that requires complete integration of numerous components from various vendors. This paper presents a multi-objective production planning model for selecting the most suitable combination of machines and operations in machining processes to simultaneously minimize the system unbalance, makespan (MK) and total flow time. The proposed model considered the capacity of machines, tool magazines, batch sizes, processing time and the time taken to transport machining parts. Moreover, it also considered the different allocation of each part of batch into various machines. The principle of biogeography-based optimization (BBO) is adapted to explore the possibilities of attaining feasible solutions for a formulated problem. The most appropriate solutions in selecting the machine and operation allocation were determined based on non-dominated sorting BBO procedure (NSBBO) and validated by FlexSim simulation environment. The obtained results highlighted the practical applicability in the implementation of FMS.
Modelling and Simulation of a Novel Modular Fixture for a Flexible Manufacturing System