Changeable Manufacturing - Classification, Design and Operation

Reconfigurable Manufacturing System (RMS) is a new manufacturing systems paradigm that aims at achieving cost-effective and rapid system changes, as needed and when needed, by incorporating principles of modularity, integrability, flexibility, scalability, convertibility, and diagnosability. RMS promises customized flexibility on demand in a short time, while Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs) provides generalized flexibility designed for the anticipated variations and built-in a priori. The characteristics of the two paradigms are outlined and compared. The concept of manufacturing system life cycle is presented. The main types of flexibility in manufacturing systems are discussed and contrasted with the various reconfiguration aspects including hard (physical) and soft (logical) reconfiguration. The types of changeability and transformability of manufacturing systems, their components as well as factories, are presented along with their enablers and compared with flexibility and reconfigurability. The importance of having harmonized human-machine manufacturing systems is highlighted and the role of people in the various manufacturing paradigms and how this varies in pursuit of productivity are illustrated. Finally, the industrial and research challenges presented by these manufacturing paradigms are discussed.

Flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing systems paradigms

Manufacturing enterprises are changing the way they behave in the market to face the increasing complexity of the economic, socio-political and technological dynamics. Manufacturing products, processes and production systems result in being challenged by evolving external drivers, including the introduction of new regulations, new materials, technologies, services and communications, the pressure on costs and sustainability. The co-evolution paradigm synthesises the recent scientific and technical approaches proposed by academic and industrial communities dealing with methodologies and tools to support the coordinated evolution (co-evolution) of products, processes and production systems. This paper aims at reviewing and systemising the research carried out in the field of manufacturing co-evolution with a particular focus on production systems. An introductory investigation of various industrial perspectives on the problem of co-evolution is presented, followed by the description of the co-evolution model and the methodology adopted for framing the existing scientific contributions in the proposed model. Then, the core part of the work is presented, consisting in a systemised analysis of the current methodologies dealing with co-evolving product, process and system and a description of problems that remain unsolved, thus motivating future research strategies and roadmaps.

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SPECIES—Co-evolution of products, processes and production systems

The selection of Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS) configurations that include arrangement of machines, equipment selection, and assignment of operations, has a significant impact on their performance. This paper reviews the relevant literature and highlights the gaps that exist in this area of research. A novel “RMS Configuration Selection Approach” is introduced. It consists of two phases; the first deals with the selection of the near-optimal alternative configurations for each possible demand scenario over the considered configuration periods. It uses a constraint satisfaction procedure and powerful meta-heuristics, real-coded Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and Tabu Search (TS), for the continuous optimization of capital cost and system availability. The second phase utilizes integer-coded GAs and TS to determine the alternatives, from those produced in the first phase, that would optimize the degree of transition smoothness over the planning horizon. It uses a stochastic model of the level of reconfiguration smoothness (RS) across all the configuration periods in the planning horizon according to the anticipated demand scenarios. This model is based on a RS metric and a reconfiguration planning procedure that guide the development of execution plans for reconfiguration. The developed approach is demonstrated and validated using a case study. It was shown that it is possible to provide the manufacturing capacity and functionality needed when needed while minimizing the reconfiguration effort. The proposed approach can provide decision support for management in selecting RMS configurations at the beginning of each configuration period.

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Optimal configuration selection for Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems

The global era of manufacturing is going on. Digital Manufacturing is one of the core strategies of the European Manufuture vision and strategic agenda towards the knowledge based production. It is driven by the application and standardization of informationand communication-technologies and the increasing demand for the efficiency of operations in global networks. The environment of manufacturing is turbulent and requires permanent adaptation of the manufacturing systems. Manufacturing Engineering covers wide scales from networks to processes and from real time to long term operations. The tools of future engineering and management of manufacturing are digital and distributed. Strategic aspects and the potential and needs of research and development are main positions of the presentation.

Digital Manufacturing In The Global Era

The often discussed challenge facing today's manufacturing companies can be summarized in just a few words: the rapid fulfillment of customers' requests in agile networks to secure a competitive position in the market. The continual changes occurring nowadays in the markets call for greater changeability respecting reconfigurability on the part of companies in reacting to the persistent pressure of the market. Though changeability represents an unquestionable necessity for forward-looking factories, it is often neglected in planning projects because of the difficulty in justifying the additional costs. This paper describes a method that makes it possible for companies to calculate the relevant costs of change using the technique of scenario planning.

C.L. Heger

Papers

Justifying Changeability. A Methodical Approach to Achieving Cost Effectiveness