The Impact of Mean Flow Time When Operating a Flexible Manufacturing System as a Programmable Transfer Line

• Main Authors: CO, H. C., MOOSA, Sharafali
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 1999
• Subjects: Operations and Supply Chain Management
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/923; https://doi.org/10.1109/PICMET.1999.808312
• Institution: Singapore Management University

One central aspect of lean production is the employment of multi-skilled workers, as opposed to specialized workers. With multi-skilled workers, any work team can complete any job, from start to finish. A job shop is an eclectic collection of machines of different process capabilities. In contrast, most modern flexible manufacturing systems consist of only one or two types of variable-mission machines. In this paper, the authors contend that the variable-mission machines in FMS are analogous to the multi-skilled workers in lean production.