Simulation assisted match-up rescheduling of flexible production systems subject to execution exceptions

An immense amount of research work has been done in the areas of scheduling and re-scheduling of various types of manufacturing systems. In this paper we present a simulation assisted approach to rescheduling complex production system configurations subject to execution exceptions. Issues like how to bring the deviation of a schedule due to exceptions back to its original trajectory and how to do this in real-time without affecting co-ordination problems on the shop floor are addressed. Our results show that combining simulation and optimization for rescheduling indeed helps to achieve both these objectives and that this approach proves to be promising to help reduce chaos in today's dynamic manufacturing environments.