Modeling and analysis of machine sharing in manufacturing systems

The strategic value of flexibility in sequential decision making

“…The following example illustrates such a situation. A detailed discussion can be found in [Benjaafar 1992] and [Benjaafar and Talavage 1992]. Using the results of section 4, it can easily be shown that E(t f |Opportunism) ≤ E(t f |Planning), with the inequality being strict under conditions of non-dominance.…”

“…shown that the flow of parts in a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) can be modeled as a multi-stage decision process (Benjaafar 1992). Flexibility was shown to arise at each stage of a part production from the availability of alternative processing and routing options from which a part can choose.…”

“…This means that in order to realize the benefit of flexibility, an opportunistic part flow controller is necessary. On the other hand, it can be shown that the need for flexibility diminishes as uncertainty is decreased or eliminated (Benjaafar 1992). In fact, flexibility has an effect on performance only in the presence of variability in the system operating conditions.…”

“…Also, in the absence of variability, both planning and opportunism become equivalent control mechanisms and result in similar performance. A more detailed discussion of the relationships between flexibility, uncertainty, and performance can be found in (Benjaafar 1992) and (Benjaafar and Talavage 1992).…”

“…In this case, decisions could be based solely on estimates of future flexibility. In fact, such a strategy has been advocated and tested by Yao and Pei (Yao and Pei 1990) and (Benjaafar 1992) who…”