Focused Flexibility in Production Systems

Manufacturing flexibility is seen as the main mechanism for surviving in the present market environment. Companies acquire systems with a high degree of flexibility to cope with frequent production volume changes and evolutions of the technological requirements of products. However, literature and industrial experience show that flexibility is not always a well-defined concept. Therefore it is really complex to understand and use flexibility during system design process. Indeed, the development of structured approaches to support the system design by considering basic flexibility forms is still an open issue. This work presents an Ontology on Flexibility aiming at providing a standard method to analyze flexibility. Firstly, it contributes in systemizing the large number of existing flexibility definitions and classifications. Secondly, it can be used to analyze real systems and to better understand their characteristics in terms of flexibility. Finally this ontology represents a key point of a general approach to design production system with the right level of flexibility.

[1]  D. Gerwin.  Manufacturing flexibility: a strategic perspective , 1993 .

[2]  Tullio Tolio,et al.  A stochastic programming approach to design the production system flexibility considering the evolution of the part families , 2009, Int. J. Manuf. Technol. Manag..

[3]  Suresh P. Sethi,et al.  Flexibility in manufacturing: A survey , 1990 .

[4]  Henrique Luiz Corrêa,et al.  Framework to analyse flexibility and unplanned change in manufacturing systems , 1996 .

[5]  Yash P. Gupta,et al.  Flexibility of manufacturing systems: Concepts and measurements , 1989 .

[6]  John R. Birge,et al.  Introduction to Stochastic Programming , 1997 .

[7]  Qingyu Zhang,et al.  Manufacturing flexibility: Defining and analyzing relationships among competence, capability, and customer satisfaction , 2003 .

[8]  Tolio. Tullio,et al.  Design of Flexible Production Systems , 2009 .

[9]  George Chryssolouris,et al.  Flexibility and Its Measurement , 1996 .

[10]  Tullio Tolio,et al.  A Review on Manufacturing Flexibility , 2009 .

[11]  John A. Sharp,et al.  A review of manufacturing flexibility , 2000, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[12]  J. H. Hyun,et al.  A Unifying Framework for Manufacturing Flexibility , 1992 .

[13]  Shabbir Ahmed,et al.  A Multi-Stage Stochastic Integer Programming Approach for Capacity Expansion under Uncertainty , 2003, J. Glob. Optim..

[14]  Andrew Wirth,et al.  Manufacturing flexibility: Measures and relationships , 1999, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[15]  Andrea Matta,et al.  A new system architecture compared with conventional production system architectures , 2000 .

[16]  Massimo Pacella,et al.  Object-oriented modeling and simulation of flexible manufacturing systems: a rule-based procedure , 2002, Simul. Model. Pract. Theory.

[17]  Stefano Tonchia,et al.  Manufacturing flexibility: A literature review , 1998 .

[18]  Tullio Tolio,et al.  Design of flexible production systems : methodologies and tools , 2009 .

[19]  T. Somers,et al.  BUSINESS STRATEGY, MANUFACTURING FLEXIBILITY, AND ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE RELATIONSHIPS: A PATH ANALYSIS APPROACH , 1996 .

[20]  Andrea Matta,et al.  An integrated approach for the configuration of automated manufacturing systems , 2000 .

[21]  Peter Nyhuis,et al.  Changeable Manufacturing - Classification, Design and Operation , 2007 .

[22]  T. Tolio,et al.  A Stochastic Approach to Design the Flexibility Degree in Manufacturing Systems with Focused Flexibility , 2007 .

[23]  Yoram Koren,et al.  Impact of Manufacturing System Configuration on Performance , 1998 .

[24]  D. Upton.  The Management of Manufacturing Flexibility , 1994 .

[25]  Jan Olhager,et al.  Productivity and flexibility: Fundamental relations between two major properties and performance measures of the production system , 1997 .

[26]  Tullio Tolio,et al.  Focused Flexibility and Production System Evolution , 2007 .

[27]  T. Tolio,et al.  An approach to design the flexibility degree in flexible manufacturing systems , 2006 .

[28]  F. Jovane,et al.  Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems , 1999 .

[29]  Alain Bernard,et al.  Methods and Tools for Effective Knowledge Life-Cycle-Management , 2008 .

[30]  G. K. Hutchinson,et al.  Flexible process plans: their value in flexible automation , 1994 .

[31]  George Chryssolouris,et al.  Manufacturing Systems: Theory and Practice , 1992 .

[32]  Kathryn E. Stecke,et al.  Design, planning, scheduling, and control problems of flexible manufacturing systems , 1985 .

[33]  Hoda A. ElMaraghy,et al.  Flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing systems paradigms , 2005 .