Research on the planning and scheduling issues of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) has not been sparse. Most, if not all, studies, however, have focused on either developing the planning model or examining the performance of different scheduling rules. To date, the FMS planning and scheduling problems have not been studied together, though they are highly interrelated.This paper takes a first step to simultaneously address the planning and scheduling problems of flexible manufacturing systems. The problems are solved as a hierarchical process. We first integrate and formulate batching, loading, and routeing, three of the most important FMS planning problems, as a 0–1 mixed integer program. According to the optimal decisions provided by the integrated planning model, we then develop an off-line scheduling scheme that is capable of generating detail parts sequencing in the sequence independent environment (i.e. the operations are not constrained by a process sequence). Finally, we suggest several extensions and future research directions.

The shift from manufacturing standard products in high volume to providing a wide variety of products in low volumes has necessitated a dramatic change in manufacturing strategies moving away from the traditional approaches which exploit economies of scale. This has influenced the design of production systems, where the principles of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) and just‐in‐time (JIT) are recognized as effective techniques for enabling corporate objectives to be met. By a combination of the principles of FMS and JIT, flexibility and reduced inventory costs can be incorporated into the design and control of a manufacturing unit. Outlines issues and decisions related to the successful “integration” of FMS and JIT.