Reconfigurable Production Systems Research Articles

Identification of reconfigurability enablers and weighting of reconfigurability characteristics based on a case study

Abstract Today manufacturing systems face a volatile demand with varying customer needs in terms of both volume and product mix ratio. The highly automated dedicated production lines can not fulfil the demand diversity which needs quick adaptation of the production system. Market fluctuations for the next years are unknown and products have shorter lifecycles. In order to specify precisely needs of factories regarding flexibility, this paper presents a methodology using a qualitative analysis and its application to a use case company. The aim is identification of current needs regarding reconfigurability of production systems and following research directions. To do so, decision makers from various fields and decision levels are identified and interviewed individually using a questionnaire. An Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is also applied to identify weights of the six characteristics of reconfigurability: modularity, integrability, customization, convertibility, scalability and diagnosability; based on the experience of the interviewed decision-makers. Indeed, there is no standardized reconfigurability indicator for the assessment of a production system regarding its changeability capacity. Weighting of these characteristics is the first step before computing numerical values for each characteristic based on a mathematical model proposed in literature.

Simulation Framework for Virtual Robot Programming in Reconfigurable Production Systems

Flexible, autonomous production systems form the basis for mastering increasing product diversity and customer-specific production. Industrial robots and modularization play a decisive role here, as they support the automation of complex processes and the reconfiguration of production systems. Yet, a change in the mechanical configuration of a production system always results in big efforts for robot programming. Standard teach-in solutions for robot programming are not suitable for highly varying configurations. An automated, adaptive path planning via simulation is necessary to fill this gap and even allow robot programming for non-expert persons. This paper presents a modular framework for automated robot path simulation and virtual robot programming in reconfigurable production systems, based on service oriented architectures and modularization. The framework is evaluated using a reconfigurable production system for flexible cultivation and differentiation of stem cells, the iCellFactory. Within the system, a gantry-mounted six-axis robot transports fluid filled vessels between multiple, freely positioned modules carrying laboratory devices.

An Executable Capability Concept in Formal Resource Descriptions

Neutral description of production resources’ capabilities, interfaces, and other characteristics is required for efficient design or reconfiguration of production systems. In our previous work, we have developed a Resource Description and Capability concepts. An integral part of the Resource Description is an Executable Capability concept, which describes resource’s control interface in a vendor neutral form. In this paper, we show the underlying data model of Executable Capabilities, and how these capabilities can be utilised in the task programming and execution of modular production systems. Finally, a few case examples are shown.

UML based reconfiguration rate analysis of assembly line depending on robot integration

Factories with a high production throughput and a low product variety traditionally choose a flow layout for mass production. The future market profile however will be volatile, customers expecting a larger choice in product diversity. Such a variable demand calls a new, flexible and reconfigurable production system, able to reconfigure in order to follow the market. This paper aims to present a method to modelize the production system permitting to identify the ways of improving the facilities on the reconfigurability criterion. Several reconfigurable assembly systems are proposed, targeting full load of the facilities. The specificity of the study consists in the consideration of both multiproduct and volume flexibility.

A new methodology to analyze the functional and physical architecture of existing products for an assembly oriented product family identification

In today’s business environment, the trend towards more product variety and customization is unbroken. Due to this development, the need of agile and reconfigurable production systems emerged to cope with various products and product families. To design and optimize production systems as well as to choose the optimal product matches, product analysis methods are needed. Indeed, most of the known methods aim to analyze a product or one product family on the physical level. Different product families, however, may differ largely in terms of the number and nature of components. This fact impedes an efficient comparison and choice of appropriate product family combinations for the production system. A new methodology is proposed to analyze existing products in view of their functional and physical architecture. The aim is to cluster these products in new assembly oriented product families for the optimization of existing assembly lines and the creation of future reconfigurable assembly systems. Based on Datum Flow Chain, the physical structure of the products is analyzed. Functional subassemblies are identified, and a functional analysis is performed. Moreover, a hybrid functional and physical architecture graph (HyFPAG) is the output which depicts the similarity between product families by providing design support to both, production system planners and product designers. An illustrative example of a nail-clipper is used to explain the proposed methodology. An industrial case study on two product families of steering columns of thyssenkrupp Presta France is then carried out to give a first industrial evaluation of the proposed approach.

A study of reconfigurable production system performance

The article studies the methods of evaluating the effectiveness of production is built on the basis of a flexible, reconfigurable systems capable of performing fast-changing market demands. Examines the history of formation of the concept of efficiency of organization of flexible production and its main parameters estimation. Based on the performance of the production system as a communication channel, describes the main performance characteristics of the configurable production systems. Described indicators are General and do not depend on the specific application of the system, which is especially important to determine the appropriate standard values. The time required for calculation of the indicators is determined on the basis of the known methods and the proposed approach, which provides a clear semantic definition of universality, flexibility, mobility and productivity, thus strictly linking the indicators together.

Exploring the design process of reconfigurable industrial production systems

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore activities, challenges, and suggest tactics for the design of industrial reconfigurable production systems that can easily adapt to changing market opportunities.Design/methodology/approachThe paper synthesizes the empirical findings of seven case studies including 47 in-depth interviews at four manufacturing companies.FindingsA conceptual production system design process and including activities that enables a long-term perspective considering reconfigurability is proposed. Additionally, critical challenges indicating that reconfigurable production system design is not a trivial issue but one that requires separate control and coordination are identified and tactics to overcome the challenges described.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors propose a process for designing reconfigurable production systems that are better suited to adjust to future needs. The knowledge of reconfigurability from the reconfigurable manufacturing system literature is applied in the general production system literature field. This study contributes to a clearer picture of managerial challenges that need to be dealt with when designing a reconfigurable production system.Practical implicationsBy clarifying key activities facilitating a long-term perspective in the design process and highlighting challenges and tactics for improvement, the findings are particularly relevant to production engineers and plant managers interested in increasing the ability to adapt to future changes through reconfigurability and improve the efficiency of their production system design process.Originality/valueAlthough reconfigurable production systems are critical for the success of manufacturing companies, the process of designing such systems is not clear. This paper stretches this by giving a comprehensive picture of the production system design process and the activities that need to be considered to meet these challenges.

Capability Matchmaking Procedure to Support Rapid Configuration and Re-configuration of Production Systems

Rapid responsiveness in terms of processing functions, production capacity and order dispatching is required from today's production systems. This paper introduces a capability-based matchmaking procedure, which supports rapid configuration and re-configuration of production systems. The approach relies on formal OWL-based descriptions of both product requirements and resource capabilities. The base algorithm for the matchmaking is introduced together with the required rules for combined capability calculation and capability matchmaking. The presented approach supports the system designer and reconfiguration planner by automatically suggesting possible resource alternatives for certain product requirements.

A Generic Decision Support Tool to Planning and Assignment Problems: Industrial Application & Industry 4.0

Decision support tools are essential to help the management of industrial systems at different levels: strategic to size the system; tactical to plan activities or assign resources; operational to schedule activities. We present a generic and modular decision support tool to solve different problems of planning, assignment, scheduling or lot-sizing. Our tool uses a hybridization between a metaheuristic and a list algorithm. The specification of the considered problem is considered into the list algorithm. Several tactical and operational problems have been solved with our tool: a problem of planning activities with resources assignment for hospital systems, a lot-sizing and scheduling problem taking into account the setup time for plastic injection, and a scheduling problem with precedence constraints. At the strategic level, this tool can also be used as part of the Industry 4.0 to design reconfigurable production systems. This paper summarizes some problems solved with the proposed tool, and presents the evolution of our tool.

Interpretive structural modeling-based framework for mass customisation enablers: an Indian footwear case

In the epoch of open economy and with the emergence of availability of individualised products over the Internet, Indian manufacturing industries are facing an enormous pressure to become more flexible and responsive, to accomplish customer’s varied and increasing demands. Mass customisation (MC) is about developing a customised product on demand for a particular customer after reception of a real order and producing it with the similar operational efficiency as one would anticipate from a mass-produced product. MC takes into account the merits of both the earlier systems of production, i.e. mass production and craft production. The craft production satisfies the personalised demands of customers and the mass production produces a limited variety of products at lower cost. Industries in developing countries such as India confront pressure from several perspectives to adopt MC. This study has been presented in the context of Indian manufacturing industries, and particularly for footwear industries to examine the enablers of MC. Achieving MC, however, require certain enabling technologies and processes in place. Several such enablers have been identified from the research literature. The objective of this study it to key out significantly important enablers for MC using interpretive structural modelling (ISM), and develop a hierarchy of these enablers for the Indian footwear units. ISM results show that modularity-based practices, digital manufacturing practices and supply chain integration are the most important MC enablers. Enhanced flexibility and responsiveness in the footwear production system can be achieved through modular and reconfigurable production system.

Study on the Third Industrial Revolution and Paradigm Transformation of China’s Manufacturing Industry—Based on Theoretical Analysis of Scale Economy and Scope Economy

After the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, European and American developed countries have deepened “the third industrial revolution” characterized by intelligence, digitization and individualization in the global market, so as to promote their industry. This brand-new industrial revolution tide will deeply change the paradigm of traditional manufacturing industry. Through the extensive application of advanced manufacturing technology like 3D print technology, flexible production technology and reconfigurable production system, the importance of large-scale standardized production under the guidance of scale economy in modern market declines gradually, and more and more attention is paid to the scope economy idea that can adapt to the market rapidly and satisfy consumers’ individualized needs. By analyzing the trend and essence of the third industrial revolution, this paper expounds the impacts that might be caused to Chinese traditional manufacturing industry, such as the reduction of labor cost advantage, localization and decentralization of production mode, gradual deepening of service degree in manufacturing industry, and suppression on the traditional industry upgrading path and industrialization process. Meanwhile, based on the analysis of scale economy and scope economy, the ideological transformation from scale economy to scope economy is further proposed; theoretical analysis is made for the applicability of these two under the environment of the third industrial revolution, and the theoretical basis and development direction for paradigm transformation of Chinese manufacturing industry in the future are pointed out.

CAD-Based Automated Assembly Planning for Variable Products in Modular Production Systems

The paper presents an approach allowing to utilize the flexibility of modular and reconfigurable production systems for the automated assembly of multi-variant products. Required assembly processes as well as valid assembly orders are automatically extracted from the CAD-file of the individual product. Assembly processes are described as skills and are automatically assigned to capable production resources after a simulative verification, generating an optimal assembly plan. The described planning process takes the properties and geometry of production resources, their mutual interactions as well as the layout and feasible material paths of the entire production system into account.

A multi-agent architecture for plug and produce on an industrial assembly platform

Modern manufacturing companies face increased pressures to adapt to shorter product life cycles and the need to reconfigure more frequently their production systems to offer new product variants. This paper proposes a new multi-agent architecture utilising “plug and produce” principles for configuration and reconfiguration of production systems with minimum human intervention. A new decision-making approach for system reconfiguration based on tasks re-allocation is presented using goal driven methods. The application of the proposed architecture is described with a number of architectural views and its deployment is illustrated using a validation scenario implemented on an industrial assembly platform. The proposed methodology provides an innovative application of a multi-agent control environment and architecture with the objective of significantly reducing the time for deployment and ramp-up of small footprint assembly systems.

A methodology for static and dynamic scheduling of automation tasks in reconfigurable production systems

The development of distributed architectures for logic control systems has a number of advantages related to the system capability of being reconfigurable and responsive toward changes of production requirements. However, the execution of various portions of the control system on multiple physical resources represents a challenge as for the control task scheduling and synchronization perspectives. The proposed work outlines a scheduling approach – named ISA (Integrated Scheduling Architecture) – supporting the dynamic execution of control tasks in distributed control systems while enriching the control nominal behavior with data gathered from the shop-floor. The benefits of the approach have been validated with reference to a flexible transportation system operating in a pilot assembly line.

Reconfigurable production system design – theoretical and practical challenges

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore theoretical and practical challenges to achieve reconfigurable production system designs. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical material of this paper includes a multiple-case study with an embedded design (Yin) including four cases, where each case represents a production system design project. The consideration of reconfigurability and its characteristics in the production system design projects was studied. To enhance validity, two real-time studies were combined with two retrospective studies (Leonard-Barton). Findings – For more than a decade foresight reports have pointed out the need for responsiveness to change through reconfigurability in production system design. In order to achieve reconfigurable production systems, three challenges were identified: to use a structured design methodology, to gain knowledge in reconfigurability and its characteristics, and to include the reconfigurability knowledge in a structured design methodology. Still there is no comprehensive support available for reconfigurability in the production system design process. Research limitations/implications – Limitations are mostly related to the chosen methodology approach, and additional empirical studies to establish generic results are required. Practical implications – By combining knowledge from the production system design field with the reconfigurable manufacturing system field a potential of meeting identified challenges is pointed out. Originality/value – This paper adds to current knowledge by pointing out three main challenges to achieving reconfigurable production systems. The paper also contributes with ideas on how to respond to these challenges.

Reconfigurable production systems

Reconfigurable production systems

Reconfigurable production systems

Reconfigurable production systems

Agent-based distributed scheduling for virtual job shops

Nowadays, market globalisation and stiff world-wide competition require flexible, demand-driven, and reconfigurable production systems that can adapt to the requirements of the increasing reduction in product life cycle and rapid changes in market demand. The advent and development of network technology (especially the Internet) and distributed computing technology make it possible for geographically dispersed manufacturing resources to be integrated and deployed effectively and efficiently. In addition, manufacturing enterprises can expand their throughput within a short time and rapidly reduce the production cycle via transferring certain jobs to other available manufacturing resources in the globalised manufacturing environment, viz., manufacturing enterprises can expand their throughput through the dynamic formation of virtual job shops according to the production requirements. Owing to more open manufacturing environments and rapid changes of market demands, the traditional centralised scheduling approaches are not suitable for this open distributed manufacturing environment. This paper proposes a distributed scheduling approach in which a multi-agent solution towards a ‘task-machine’ assignment is presented. The main points of discussion are the formation of a virtual job shop that is based on market mechanism and the distributed scheduling approach based on negotiation.

Emplacement and Blue Print – An Approach to Handle and Describe Modules for Evolvable Assembly Systems

Today's production systems have presently continuous changes like load variations, new products, faults, change of process modules, etc. which require new methods to react to them quicker, sustainable and more automatically. In order to answer these requirements, the paper presents as one corner stone of the solution, a concept called Emplacement to describe, manage and use the information of process equipment in modular and reconfigurable production systems like Evolvable Assembly Systems. First the paper introduces the concept and presents the key components. It discusses also how the concept addresses the specific requirements of systems in scope. Second the implementation of the concept is presented as two standardised, XML based file formats – Emplacement and Blue Print – were developed for electronic module description. The description delivers the virtual representation of the module including information like interfaces, skills, properties (business and technical), CAD models, datasheets, etc. The interconnection between and details of these languages are discussed. Finally a case study making use of the developed languages is briefly introduced.

A multiagent-based control system applied to an educational shop floor

This paper addresses the design and implementation of a multiagent-based control architecture to support modular reconfigurable production systems. The requirements for plugability of modules (manufacturing components) and product changes were considered and tested against an educational platform based on Fischertechnik, which resembles a production system composed of several workstations connected by a crane and conveyors.