Flexible manufacturing system

A flexible manufacturing system, FMS, is a manufacturing system built with enough flexibility to react to changes, whether predicted or unpredicted. Its basic idea is to treat all similar connected machines as parallel resources, so any machine can perform any operation on any part and utilization rises, and to move the human task of clamping and unclamping parts to separate set-up stations so that operators work in longer stints and machines can run unmanned between them. Flexibility falls into two categories: routing flexibility, the ability to make new product types and change the order of operations, and machine flexibility, the ability to use several machines for one operation and to absorb large changes in volume, capacity or capability. Most systems have three parts: work machines that are often automated four or five axis CNC machines, a material handling and buffering system with set-up stations, and a central control computer that plans production and directs material and machine flow. Advantages include lower unit cost and shorter lead times; disadvantages include high set-up cost and the need for skilled labour.