Empirical study on entropy models of cellular manufacturing systems

From the theoretical point of view, the states of manufacturing resources can be monitored and assessed through the amount of information needed to describe their technological structure and operational state. The amount of information needed to describe cellular manufacturing systems is investigated by two measures: the structural entropy and the operational entropy. Based on the Shannon entropy, the models of the structural entropy and the operational entropy of cellular manufacturing systems are developed, and the cognizance of the states of manufacturing resources is also illustrated. Scheduling is introduced to measure the entropy models of cellular manufacturing systems, and the feasible concepts of maximum schedule horizon and schedule adherence are advanced to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of schedules. Finally, an example is used to demonstrate the validity of the proposed methodology.