Impact of Routing and Pallet Flexibility on Flexible Manufacturing System

Flexibility in manufacturing operations is becoming increasingly important to industrial firms, due to demand volatility, globalization of markets, competition, and shorter product life cycles. This paper examines potential benefits of routing and pallet flexibility in flexible manufacturing systems. This paper focuses on flexibility’s benefits exclusive of make-span. The contribution of this paper concerns first with the individual impact of routing flexibility and pallet flexibility and then their combined effect on the system performance. The results of the analysis show that (i) the value of make-span decreases with increase in routing flexibility (ii) the value of make-span increases/decreases with change in pallet flexibility (iii) the combined effect of routing and pallet flexibility on make-span is substantial and (iv) there is some impact of variable number of pallets on system performance. This study will help the practitioners to have clear understanding of the impact of routing and pallet flexibility on the performance of flexible manufacturing system.