The design and control problems exhibited by today’s flexible manufacturing environments are quite complex. This complexity and the randomness inherent in real-time environments makes simulation the best tool in investigating different design and control approaches prior to real-life implementation. FMS.NET is a simulation software developed in BUFAIM as a test-bed to compare performance under different design configurations and and short-term planning level and operational level decision making strategies. The object-oriented architecture of the software provides the flexibility to model a large range of job-shop and FMS environments, and several decision algorithms with different levels of intelligence and complexity. The BUFAIM Model Factory can also be simulated using this software. FMS.NET is under continuous development to serve several research lines. For instance, it has been re-used in developing a real-time controller for the Model Factory.

Real-time management, control and scheduling of production, and the reliable and fast updating of schedules and plans in case of an unexpected event is of crucial importance for the competitiveness of today’s enterprises. The research on alternative ways of dividing responsibilities among a central controller and several independent/semi-independent agents, and the distributed scheduling concept, therefore gains importance. Two different architectures have been implemented for real time SFC of the model factory in BUFAIM using object-oriented methodology: the layered SFC system which adopts a hybrid-hierarchical architecture and the distributed SFC system where orders and resources are implemented as autonomous agents (holons).

The key element in achieving a fully automated and integrated manufacturing environment is an efficient material handling system. Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) can provide the required flexibility by readily responding to frequently changing transport patterns and they can be integrated with fully automated intelligent control systems. The design, management and control of AGV systems are complex problems which constitute an active research area in BUFAIM.

In today’s dynamic manufacturing environments where several product types are manufactured simultaneously with frequent changes in product mix and transport patterns. The basic problem with such a dynamic and flexible environment is that it seldom reaches steady state, therefore the strategies and rules used in managing such systems should be ‘responsive’ rather than static. The decisions should be responsive to mainly the critical resources in the system – the processing capacity and the transportation capacity – which not only depend on the design of the system but also change throughout time depending on demand structure. Responsiveness implicates with several concepts including adaptiveness, reaction and learning and involves forming a closed-loop system that integrates shop floor control with of tactical and operational planning stages. In this manner, the higher planning levels are enabled to adapt themselves by tuning several parameters according to the indigenous factors fed back from lower levels to improve the performance of the overall planning activity.

The characterization and measurement of different types of manufacturing flexibilities, assessing the requirement for flexibility in a given system and developing strategies to make best use of available flexibility are challenging research topics tackled in BUFAIM. Existing research specifically concentrates on routing flexibility.