RMS capacity utilisation: product family and supply chain

Abstract

The paper contributes to development of RMS through linkage with external stakeholders such as customers and suppliers of parts/raw materials to handle demand fluctuations that necessitate information sharing across the supply chain tiers. RMS is developed as an integrated supply chain hub for adjusting production capacity using a hybrid methodology of decision trees and Markov analysis. The proposed Markov Chain model contributes to evaluate and monitor system reconfigurations required due to changes of product families with consideration of the products life cycles. The simulation findings indicate that system productivity and financial performance in terms of the profit contribution of product-process allocation will vary over configuration stages. The capacity of an RMS with limited product families and/or limited model variants becomes gradually inoperative whilst approaching upcoming configuration stages due to the end of product life cycles. As a result, reconfiguration preparation is suggested quite before ending life cycle of an existing product in process, for switching from a product family to a new/another product family in the production range, subject to its present demand. The proposed model is illustrated through a simplified case study with given product families and transition probabilities.

Optimization of Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems Configuration: A Literature Review

“…and generally includes the plan of multiple parts/products simultaneously [3,10]. In fact, ProP papers from this review mostly optimized the RMS configuration for one or many product families and multiple product/parts simultaneously, by respecting machine capacity and specific demand rates in a time period [15,24,29,40].…”

“…Although their propositions were focused on RMS, their case studies were usually applied in process composed by CNC or dedicated machines, without including RMTs [17,23,24,53]. Some researchers conducted their case study in a reconfigurable assembly line of an automotive industry [10,25]; while others did not clearly present the machine types that made up their case study [8,11,15].…”

Reconfigurable Manufacturing: A Classification of Elements Enabling Convertibility and Scalability

“…Possibility to vary sequences of operations and related IT support: this element may be defined at SL as a ME, however it also depends on PE, such as the presence of functional redundancies of workstations/ functional units [19] and specific fea-tures of the material handling system [6], [20]. Examples related to this element are opportunities and decisions on machines relocation [35] and material handling redirections [35]. Even in this case, the possibility to benefit of the IT support is related to the connectivity of production resources at WL.…”

“…9) Organizational practices and related IT support to decide on changes on the op-erations to meet market requirements: such ME at FL enables LT reconfigurations. These are: labor reassignment [35] and training procedures (such as cross training and continuous improvement of operators skills; outsourcing and subcontracting possibili-ties [6]; exploitation of different processing plans available for making a product [7]; possibility to act on shifts and flexible labor time [7]. For example, the possibility to change shifts and number of resources involved [6], [20] is a ME that has to be de-fined at FL during the CP and, once defined, it allows implementing LT-oriented changes of production capacity and functionality at either WL and SL.…”

Factors for Improving and Moderating a Successful Supply Chain

“…However, large investment costs may also lead to hesitancy by partners, and they will be more likely to ask themselves if these investment costs are even necessary (Mohd Yusoff, Ashari, & Salleh, 2016). If these partners cannot ensure that the investment costs will improve information transparency and lead to greater profit, then they may take a passive attitude and control their investment costs (Abdi & Labib, 2017). However, to improve information transparency, investment in information systems is necessary, or information transparency improvements will be affected and lead to a low resource adjustment and redistribution ability (Yinan, Tang, & Zhang, 2014).…”