Scheduling Adaptive Modular Flexible Manufacturing Systems (SAM-FMS)

Smart industry is a new technological revolution that offers great promises to increase manufacturing productivity and flexibility at lower cost. These benefits can only be realized through novel scheduling technology: production schedules determine quality, speed, and cost of production by determining in which order, on which machines, when, and for how long production steps are performed. Scheduler design needs a high degree of automation to cope with the increasing productivity, customization, and robustness demands of smart industry. Both the mechanical structure of manufacturing systems and the product flow scheduling are essential for productivity. Structure-scheduling co-design is therefore crucial. The SAM-FMS project will deliver new scheduling and co-design methods by pursuing model-driven and constraint-based synthesis approaches based on flow-shop models of manufacturing systems. The methods will be developed in close collaboration with Canon Production Printing, ASML, Vanderlande Industries, and ESI (TNO). Canon production printers act as driver case for the research.