A Novel Framework Based on Integration of Simulation Modelling and MCDM Methods for Solving FMS Scheduling Problems

Abstract

Scheduling in Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs) is an important area of research as it significantly affects performance of the systems. In scheduling problems, determination of an appropriate order for jobs to be processed on a machine is a difficult task and to solve such problems, job priority rules (JPRs) are used. Several JPRs have been developed with an aim to obtain better performance, measured in terms of one or more scheduling performance measures (SPMs). However, selection of an appropriate rule is still an area of research as no single rule provides better results for all SPMs considered simultaneously. This work proposes a framework which is based on an integration of simulation and multi criteria decision making (MCDM) methods for the selection of an appropriate JPR yielding optimum results for multiple SPMs taken together. The proposed framework includes development of a simulation model to collect values of the SPMs corresponding to different JPRs. Further, five MCDM methods have been used to determine rank of the JPRs. Since different MCDM methods produce different ranking result therefore, the final rank of the JPRs has been determined by comparing the rank derived from these methods using membership degree method. To exemplify the probable application of the proposed framework, it has been implemented on a specific FMS taken from the literature in order to select the best JPR.