Composite performance metric for product flow configuration selection of reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS)

Abstract

This paper proposes a new metric for product flow configuration selection for reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) that considers nine industrially relevant important factors. The metrics for the identified factors are first proposed and a composite performance metric (CPM) that accounts for the nine factors is proposed to assess RMS performance. The developed methodology of CPM provides the user to opt either a subjective or an objective approach to assign suitable weights for each of the nine performance metrics. Developed CPM has been applied in an industrial environment with the support of a manufacturing company by taking two case study parts and alternate configurations to conduct the study. The research work presented in the paper presents a novel approach to identify the most suitable configuration in a RMS addressing a major challenge faced by the industry.