Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems

Manufacturing companies in the 21st Century will face unpredictable, high-frequency market changes driven by global competition. To stay competitive, these companies must possess new types of manufacturing systems that are cost-effective and very responsive to all these market changes. Reconfigurability, an engineering technology that deals with cost-effective, quick reaction to market changes, is needed. Reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS), whose components are reconfigurable machines and reconfigurable controllers, as well as methodologies for their systematic design and rapid ramp-up, are the cornerstones of this new manufacturing paradigm. 1 THE CHALLENGE The need and rationale for reconfigurable manufacturing systems arises from unpredictable market changes that are occurring with increasing pace during the recent years. These changes include: • increasing frequency introduction of new products, • changes in parts for existing products, • large fluctuations in product demand and mix, • changes in government regulations (safety and environment), and • changes in process technology. These changes are driven by aggressive economic competition on a global scale, more educated and demanding customers , and a rapid pace of change in process technology [1]. These drivers reflect a new balance among economy, technology and society. To survive in this new manufacturing environment, companies must be able to react to changes rapidly and cost-effectively. To cope with the short windows of opportunity for introduction of new products, computer-aided design (CAD) has dramatically reduced product development times during the last decade (Figure 1, top). However, such design methodolo-gies do not exist for the manufacturing system itself, and therefore its design time remains lengthy. Manufacturing system lead-time (i.e., the time to design and build or reconfigure the manufacturing system, and to ramp-up to full-volume, high-quality production) has now become the bottleneck. Brief windows of opportunity can be captured, along with major economic savings, if the lead-time of manufacturing systems can be reduced. Reduced lead-time can be achieved through the rapid design of systems that are created from modular components, or by the reconfiguration of an existing manufacturing system to produce new products, as depicted in Figure 1, bottom [2]. In order to produce new products and accommodate required changes in existing products, new functions must be added to the manufacturing system through reconfiguration. This type of reconfiguration (i.e., adding manufacturing functions) is also needed for accommodating government regulations and Annals of the CIRP Vol. 48/2/1999 integrating new process technology (such as new sensors, more reliable machine elements, etc.). Many …