The objective of this paper is to analyze a pull type multi-product, multi-line and multi-stage flexible manufacturing system whose resources are subject to planned and unplanned breakdown conditions. To ensure a continual supply of the finished products, under breakdown conditions, parts/materials flow through alternate routes exhibiting routing flexibility. The machine resources are flexible in this study and are capable of producing more than one item. Every machining and assembly station has been equipped with automated inspection units to ensure the quality of the products. The system is modelled through coloured Petri net methodology and the impact of input factors have been shown on the performance of the system. The study has been extended to explore near-optimal conditions of the system using design of experiment and response surface methods.

We have demonstrated synchronization of chaos in a pair of one-way coupled Colpitts oscillators by both experiment and numerical simulation. We have investigated parameter regions for achieving chaos-synchronization when one of the internal parameters is mismatched between the master and slave oscillators, and clarify the tolerance of parameter regions for synchronization against parameter mismatching.