Expert simulation systems—recent developments and applications in flexible manufacturing systems

Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS), as a class of automated production systems, are being implemented to increase the flexibility and productivity of discrete part manufacturing. Today, as a result of on-going advances and developments in hardware, this technology is not only becoming more complex to control, but also presenting a number of decision problems to be solved, which, in turn, increases the pressure on both the researchers and practitioners to develop better software algorithms in order to use these extensive hardware systems efficiently. In the recent literature on FMS, planning problems are classified into strategic, tactical, and operational areas. Each area has been also studied extensively and several solution approaches have been proposed ranging from analytical techniques to simulation and expert systems. The objective of this paper is to review the recent developments in simulation and to discuss the role of Expert Simulation Systems (ESS) in FMS by identifying possible future research areas.