Abstract
Tool sharing among machining centers in flexible manufacturing system is effective to improve system performance. Since job buffer is important to decrease the impact of job transfer delay which results in idling time of machining center, the proper job buffer capacity must be considered in the tool sharing policy. In this paper, an adjustment method for loading balance among machining centers is proposed to cope with the loading unbalance caused by dynamical job releases. With different transfer speeds and job buffer capacities, the proposed method is investigated by simulations. Simulation results show that adequate buffer capacity is important to satisfy the effectiveness of the proposed method.
