Flexible manufacturing systems

With shortening product lifetimes requiring trigger-fast manufacturing response to market changes, the Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) concept of short lead times, low inventory, and high adaptability should be having a field day. But the large amount of planning knowledge and the dispersed, interdisciplinary nature of the sources of that valuable information have held FMS back. Now, this comprehensive and systematic overview of both the design models and quantitative solution methods for FMS support, configuration, and operation rectifies that problem. Students, production managers/planners, and FMS installation planners can now find everything they need in one authoritative and up-to-date source. Whether it's used as supporting material in graduate level operations management, industrial and systems engineering, and operations research courses...as a cost- and time-saving guide to the problems and complex interdependencies of FMS for industrial decision makers...or as a desktop tool for planners who need access to the range of FMS design alternatives - this single volume is the FMS solution.