Toward scalability evaluation of multi-model lines

Abstract

Manufacturing companies are nowadays facing the high volatility of market conditions and the need for increased customization, which lead them to consider Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS) as a way to react quickly and efficiently to changes in order to remain competitive. Two important characteristics of such systems are the scalability and the customization. Scalability and customization refer to the ability to change the throughput capacity and to the flexibility to produce various models from the same part family, respectively. However, if both characteristics have been studied in the literature in recent years, they are usually considered independently. In this article, we are proposing a new scalability indicator dedicated to the case of multi-model RMS as well as a procedure to generate a set of configurations. An illustrative example is presented to explain the main differences with the single-model case.