PART FAMILY FORMATION FOR RECONFIGURABLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM CONSIDERING ALTERNATIVE OPERATION SEQUENCES

Abstract

Reconfigurable Manufacturing System (RMS) has been envisaged to fulfil the dynamic requirements of present manufacturing environment by adjusting its capacity and functionality. The proposed methodology is consisting of three stages. In the first stage, the clustering of Part Operation Incidence Matrix (POIM) is done by using a standard clustering technique. In the second stage, one operation sequence is selected for each part type. Finally, the reduced POIM corresponding to operation sequences selected in the last stage is used for simultaneous formulation of part families and operation groups. The proposed methodology has vast potential for experimentation with other CMS clustering methods.