Abstract
This paper deals with rule-based on-line scheduling of Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS). Operations research methods and simulation methods, which have been often used in off-line scheduling, cannot be applied to on-line scheduling, because of the computational complexity. To cope with this difficulty, we propose to apply a rule base to resolve the conflicts arised in machine tools or transports. To generate and evaluate the rule base for on-line schedulings, we construct an FMS simulation system to describe stochastic behavior, such as failures of machine tools, repair time and variations of processing times using hierarchical stochastic Petri nets. By using the FMS simulation system, we construct and evaluate the rule base for on-line scheduling.
