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This research is concerned with certain production planning problems associated with flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) with high tool variety. In this environment of FMS, the tool requirements at workstations exceed the respective tool magazine capacities. During an extensive survey of related literature, it appeared that the problems associated with this type of FMS have been overlooked by the FMS research community. The operational problems of FMS are discussed with special reference to the constraints imposed by tooling. The characteristics of the selected FMS type are clearly defined. This discussion is supplemented with a detailed description of a real FMS which resembles the operations of the selected type of FMS. Having identified certain drawbacks of some existing simulation software, the development of a comprehensive FMS simulator which uses a novel hybrid modelling technique is discussed. The use of a graphical post-processor which can be used to enhance the system logic of the FMS is also described number of parameters associated with the tool management system are identified and the methods are described to evaluate these parameters. The importance of evaluating these parameters in design and operation of an FMS is stressed. The development of a tool post-processor which can assist in identifying the scale of the tooling problem and in evaluating tool management parameters is presented. A variety of tool availability strategies which reduce the tool exchange rates are suggested and evaluated. Finally, the part selection (for immediate processing) problem is solved using a novel technique which takes the advantage of the availability of real time data in FMS.

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The software industry is facing a great challenge due to the demand of quality and complexity on an ever increasing number of software products. The software industry has been dealing with this challenge by software process assessment and improvement, and by improving and developiong more sophisticated software development methodologies. Quality concepts and practices have been well formulated in traditional manufacturing industries, especially in Japan. However many successful and influential manufacturing quality techniques have not been examined systematically in context of software quality. To tackle the existing problems in improving the software process maturity and software product quality, I investigate the quality principles and techniques developed in manufacturing industries and study the feasibility and ways in applying them to software quality. The similarities and differences between software and manufacturing industries are analysed. Motivated by the TQM (Total Quality Management) concept, the Japanese quality control tools and quality management tools are examined together with the Deming cycle in the context of software process improvement. The manufacturing process capability indices Cp and Cpk are examined and it is shown how they can be used in quantitatively monitoring, controlling and improving the software process. The very successful Japanese manufacturing quality techniques, Taguchi methods, are investigated. Two of these methods are shown to be appropriate to apply to software quality. The Taguchi's optimal parameter design method is used to produce the Orthogonal Software Testing Methodology to optimise software testing. Taguchi's fractional factorial experimentation and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) method is used to produce an Orthoganol Software Performance Evaluation Methodology which provides an experimental method for effective software performance evaluation.