MODELLING OF THE VARIOUS FLEXIBILITIES IN A FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM

The manufacturing organizations adopt Flexible Manufacturing Systems to meet the challenges imposed by today's volatile market standards. An FMS is designed to combine the efficiency of a mass production line and the flexibility of a job shop to produce a variety of products on a group of machines. Flexibility is a key factor in a flexible manufacturing system performance. Despite the advantages offered, the implementation of FMS has not been very popular as it is very difficult to quantify the factors favouring FMS implementation. Therefore an attempt has been made in the present work to identify and categorize various flexibility factors influenced by the implementation of FMS in a firm further these factors are quantitatively analyzed to find their inhibiting strength using Graph Theory Approach (GTA).