A decision-making model for flexible manufacturing system

Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to develop a computer aided decision-making model for flexible manufacturing system (FMS) situations when multiple conflicting objectives are addressed by the management. Design/methodology/approach ‐ It is assumed that the problem is the managerial level schedule rather than the operational schedule. As a tool, goal programming has been employed for measuring the trade-offs among the objectives. As a safeguard, the level of the reliability of the constraints associated with the random coefficients is taken into consideration. As an optimization technique, the approach of chance constrained programming which has been an operational way for introducing probabilistic constraints into the collection of the linear programming and goal programming problem constraints is stated and mathematically formulated. Findings ‐ The approach of chance constrained programming is suitable to introduce management concerns about the reliability of the constraints of the problem in the FMS. Originality/value ‐ The paper gives an overview of the FMS and proposes a goal programming model for the analysis of problem. The proposed model acknowledges the randomness of customer demands for better standardization of production planning and inventory management systems. By the fact that customer demands are not always deterministic the hypothesis that sale level for each period is normally distributed is imposed. A sample example problem is provided to show how the proposed model can work.