The objective of this project is to develop analytical models to investigate parts routing in a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). To be processed in a FMS, a part normally has a large number of alternative routes to follow. These alternative routes contribute to the flexibility of the system, and enable it to cope with random disturbances. It is therefore desirable that parts routing in a FMS should follow a dynamic scheme which is adaptive to the on-line state of the system. Earlier work on dynamic routing is extended through studying the concept of routing flexibility. Specifically, the required on-line information for managing routing flexibility will first be identified and an information-theoretic measure, "routing entropy," will be developed to quantify routing flexibility. Based on this measure, a routing principle, "least reduction in routing entropy," will be proposed which aims at maximizing the routing flexibility in the on-line system. A dynamic routing scheme will be studied which implements this principle and is developed through modeling the FMS as a closed queueing network.
