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The configurations of reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) evolved around market requirements and corresponding manufacture capabilities, exploiting all available resources. Similar products / parts families are grouped together and requires a specific manufacturing configuration in term of setups and respective tools changes in RMS. The recognition of minimum number of setup changes in multi parts production and its application for part family formation is an important step in RMS. In the present work, a novel method has been developed for recognition of minimum number of part setups with tool change options for calculation of similarity relation of parts, keeping in view the precedence constraints, machining constraints and good manufacturing practices. Bypass moves and idle machines in setup sequencing (BMIMS) similarity coefficient based on setup sequence of parts has been developed on the basis of Longest common subsequence (LCS) for setup sequences. The developed coefficient of similarity was compared for analysis with the existing similarity/distance coefficients, already available in literature. The average linkage clustering algorithm has been applied for classification of example parts using this similarity coefficient. The developed methodology is useful for RMS as well as for cellular manufacturing system. Index Terms-Reconfigurable manufacturing system, part family formation, feature grouping, setup sequence, similarity coefficient.

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