Scheduling parameters in flexible manufacturing cells

The existence of a well-designed scheduling procedure is a major condition for an effective integration of a flexible manufacturing cell (FMC) in the material flow of a firm. This paper shows the presence and relative importance of three parameter types in the scheduling of operations on a flexible manufacturing cell: workload control parameters, sequencing parameters, and control space parameters. A (full factorial) simulation study is performed in order to study the impact of the scheduling parameters on the performance of the FMC. It is shown that workload control parameters and sequencing parameters are strongly linked to each other. The study, furthermore, indicates how important performance indicators, such as the utilization of the FMC and the average throughput time of order, can be influenced by the scheduling parameters.