Reconfiguration Solution Assessment Of The Reconfigurable Manufacturing System

Nowadays, in the dynamic and fluctuating market, manufacturing enterprises are faced with huge challenges to react rapidly to changes and satisfy various customers' needs with respect to production volume and product profile. Reconfigurable manufacturing mode is then proposed as an advanced manufacturing philosophy to enhance the adaptability and flexibility of manufacturing systems. Through both physical and logical reconfiguration, Reconfigurable Manufacturing System (RMS) is able to fulfill customers' needs at the minimal cost by making full use of the resources currently available.As part of the project "The rapidly response manufacturing technology XXX" proposed in "The 11 th Five Years Plan of the National Defense", this dissertation carries out the study on "Reconfiguration Solution Assessment of the RMS".Five reconfiguration perspectives were identified based on the hierarchical breakdown of manufacturing systems, including: organization structure reconfiguration, process reconfiguration, machining system reconfiguration, product reconfiguration and information platform reconfiguration. By referring to research literature and the results of enterprise survey, an RMS assessment index system was established, which is composed of six primary elements such as time, cost, quality, productivity, flexibility and the environment. Each of these was elaborated and analyzed. The weight was determined for and assigned to each of the index by using the information entropy method. The MCDM method Electreâ…¢was applied to assess the RMS reconfiguration solution. A case study was presented to further demonstrate the feasibility and advanced philosophy of the assessment approach. A Petri Net was built to model RMS. As part of the model, the reconfiguration cost, one of the assessment indexes, is calculated, by taking into account summing up the cost of adding new equipment, removing the original one and adjusting them, to provide decision support in the process of assessment. By highlighting the differences in the process set before and after reconfiguration, the reconfiguration principle has been proposed to describe and guide the process of the manufacturing system reconfiguration. A case study was presented to validate the feasibility and rationality of the model.