DEVELOPMENT OF ASSESSMENT CRITERIA FOR RECONFIGURABILITY IN A MANUFACTURING SYSTEM

Abstract: To survive in the global market the manufacturing companies need to meet the cus-tomer demands quickly and effectively. Therefore, lot of companies are striving to overcome the demand fluctuation and uncertainty. RMS is a concept which handles uncertainty easily by running the product mix and varying the level of volume accord-ing to the requirement. The reconfigurability level of manufacturing system is as-sessed by evaluating the criteria affecting the characteristics of the system.The characteristics of reconfigurability are scalability, customization, convertibility, modularity, integrability and diagnosability. A RMS achieves quick and cost effective changes through customization and convertibility, it handles volume variations through scalability. These characteristics are achieved with the help of modularity and integrability. A detailed assessment of a manufacturing system based on these charac-teristics will indicate its level of reconfigurability. Hence assessment of a manufactur-ing system for reconfigurability becomes necessary in the current turbulent market conditions.This research presents a method to assess the reconfigurability in a manufacturing system. The research is divided into two parts where, in the first part a qualitative as-sessment method is developed, and it is then tested in the second part. The study uses two research methods namely literature review and case study. Based on literature re-view assessment criteria for each characteristic of reconfigurability are listed and an assessment method is developed. The assessment method uses a radar chart to repre-sent the level of reconfigurability. This is supported with a case study where the de-veloped assessment method is tested and validated.