An FMS consists of three stations plus a load/unload station.Station 1 loads and unloads parts using two servers (materialhandling workers). Station 2 performs horizontal milling operationswith two servers (identical CNC horizontal milling machines).Station 3 performs vertical milling operations with three servers(identical CNC vertical milling machines). Station 4 performsdrilling operations with two servers (identical drill presses). Themachines are connected by a part handling system that has two workcarriers and a mean transport time = 3.5 min. The FMS produces fourparts, A, B, C, and D, whose part mix fractions and processroutings are presented in the table below. The operation frequencyis fijk = 1.0 for all operations. Determine (a) maximum productionrate of the FMS, (b) utilization of each machine in this system,and (c) average utilisation of the system U s .
