Impacts of Flexible Routing in Control Architectures for Material Flow Systems

The degree to which routing flexibility can influence manufacturing system performance is the focus of this chapter. Of special interest is the performance of material flow control architectures which integrate flexible routing concepts (e.g., the conduct of fabrication/assembly operations in alternate sequences) with flexibility in the determination of product mix or machine level sequencing. The manufacturing context is that of diverse mixed technology circuit boards assembled using a cellular approach. The research methodology is that of simulation using the SIMAN language. Results indicate that the incorporation of flexible routing concepts into material flow architectures can significantly affect system performance, especially when integrated with other operational control mechanisms.