Reducing work-in-process inventory in certain classes of flexible manufacturing systems

In this paper, we establish that maintaining a balanced workload on each machine over time stochastically minimizes the work-in-process inventory in certain types of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) with finite or infinite common input buffer storage and an ample buffer et each machine. The results obtained here complement those obtained by [Stecke and Morin, 1985], in which it is established that balancing workloads maximizes expected production, again for the. same, particular types of FMSs. [Stecke and Morin, 1985] treats a static FMS loading problem, while this paper addresses a dynamic problem which considers three strategies to control the release of parts into the system.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/26086/1/0000162.pd