The evidence is clear that a lack of attention to structured tool management has resulted in
the poor performance of many manufacturing systems. Plant tooling systems affect product …

This review paper describes the state-of-the-art research on flexible manufacturing systems
(FMS) design and planning issues. The emphasis is on presenting research results coming …

This paper introduces the generic concept of processing rates as decision variables in
Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS's). The objective is to determine the minimum cost …

Abstract Design issues in various types of manufacturing systems such as flow lines,
automatic transfer lines, job shops, flexible machining systems, flexible assembly systems …

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) are automated factories in which many different part
types are produced simultaneously. The tool-loading problem now adds further to the …

The problem of cutting tool management has been brought to the forefront with the
emergence of computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) and, in particular, flexible …

We present a rough-cut analysis tool that quickly determines a few potential cost-effective
designs at the initial design stage of flexible assembly systems (FASs) prior to a detailed …

Improving manufacturing and attaining manufacturing excellence to gain competitive
advantage has attracted a lot of attention in the last few years. Many manufacturing …

Existing design aids for flexible assembly systems (FASs) have had limited success in real
applications because of the simplicity of the underlying assumptions, treatment of isolated …

In automated production systems like flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs), an important
issue is to find an adequate workload for each machine for each time period. Many integer …