Effective operational control of a manufacturing system that has routing flexibility is dependent upon being able to make informed real-time decisions in the event of a system disruption, such as a machine breakdown or parts shortage. This paper presents a methodology for making a real-time selective rerouting decision using steadystate system performance estimates from simulation models run a priori to any system disturbance. The approach is to create a relatively simple tool based on simulated long-term system performance data. Evaluation of the effectiveness of the approach is based upon system performance measures of average flowtime and average throughput. 1 MOTIVATION Routing flexibility in a manufacturing system is possible when different machines can perform the same operation, which allows jobs to follow several possible machine sequences (Browne et al. 1984). From an operational control viewpoint, this flexibility may be used in two ways. First, it might be used for continuo...
Catherine M. Harmonosky, Robert H. Farr, Ming-Chua