Operating Procedure of an FMS
The typical operating procedure of an FMS is as:
1. In the starting of the day's job orders shall be entered, either directly or downloaded from the plant computer.
2. The system checks out that the route sheet and process plans for all of the jobs to be done are available; else action needs to be taken to initiate to get this information. In the mean time those jobs are to be eliminated from the hob list. They may reenter when the process plans are available.
3. Check out for the availability of the machine tools, cutting tools and raw material. It is essential to ensure that the needed tools and workpieces in a form appropriate for immediate use be made available before begin of the day. For this reason, it is possible to have a look ahead capability in the software to make a trial schedule run a little earlier to provide instructions to the tool crib & work preparation areas.
4. Once having all the equipment in place, schedule the parts depend on the priorities assigned. Make a simulation run of the schedule to see that everything is in order. Depend on the prepared or feasible schedule make the job list sequence and create the several tasks in chronological order to be executed by the FMS controller.
5. Send tool orders to the tool crib and fixture & blank orders to the work preparation areas.
6. Begin executing the formed sequence of tasks as shown in Figure 7.
7. This is possible to enter any new orders, which can change the created task chronological order. Also some priorities for the jobs might be changed in between, which required rescheduling of the remaining tasks and provision might need to be provided in software for this function as well.
8. The current status of jobs might be seen on the FMS terminal from where manual intervention by the supervisor might be initiated when essential. Additionally a number of reports on the several elements of FMS might always be made available. It will help in the initiation and implementation of optimal decisions by the supervisor when necessary.