published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Deadlocks are critical events in Flexible Manufacturing Cells (FMC) that result from circular waits among a set of resources. Circular waits happen when a set of resources with finite capacity are in a permanent hold due to wait state to admit new jobs. Past literature examines the deadlock-free scheduling in FMCs considering many types of resources and techniques. This thesis proposes a new resource-oriented deadlock-free approach using a robot equipped with dual-grippers serving as a material handler in a FMC. The proposed methodology uses Constraint Programming (CP). The system performance is analyzed using different buffer configurations. Many test problems are generated to validate the developed models. The finding demonstrates that the proposed dual-gripper robot (DGR) can outperform the single-gripper robot (SGR) in many settings for FMCs. Likewise, the experience with the CP for the modeling and solving approach proposed in this research consolidates its application to FMC deadlock-free scheduling problems.

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Deadlocks are critical events in Flexible Manufacturing Cells (FMC) that result from circular waits among a set of resources. Circular waits happen when a set of resources with finite capacity are in a permanent hold due to wait state to admit new jobs. Past literature examines the deadlock-free scheduling in FMCs considering many types of resources and techniques. This thesis proposes a new resource-oriented deadlock-free approach using a robot equipped with dual-grippers serving as a material handler in a FMC. The proposed methodology uses Constraint Programming (CP). The system performance is analyzed using different buffer configurations. Many test problems are generated to validate the developed models. The finding demonstrates that the proposed dual-gripper robot (DGR) can outperform the single-gripper robot (SGR) in many settings for FMCs. Likewise, the experience with the CP for the modeling and solving approach proposed in this research consolidates its application to FMC deadlock-free scheduling problems.

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Today's manufacturers tend to use integrated manufacturing systems in order to achieve the capability to quickly respond to customer's requirements and produce high quality products in the shortest possible time and at the lowest possible cost. However, due to insufficient resources, manufacturing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are having difficulties in achieving this flexibility and competing with large companies. By integrating the manufacturing resources of many partners, which may be located in different regions, SMEs can form a global SME network to achieve the competitive edge. This need for the integration of globally distributed manufacturing resources across enterprise boundaries has been conceptualised with an integration concept of Virtual Computer Integrated Manufacturing (VCIM). / VCIM extends Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) system to the next stage of virtual enterprise, and aims to provide the capability to quickly respond to customers' product orders based on working status information of distributed resources in real time. In a VCIM system, manufacturing resources may belong to different partner enterprises, or be located at different areas, but all have the intention of working together to achieve market screen. The emphasis of VCIM is to integrate many manufacturing resources and provide cohesive services for customers who may be at different locations. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2007.