RMS Distinguished Characteristics Through a Design Strategy

This chapter highlights the RMSs characteristics through comparison with conventional manufacturing systems (MSs) such as flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) and cellular manufacturing systems (CMSs) in order to address a design strategy for an RMS. This stage needs a basic system concept to describe the system characteristics and a strategy highlighting the system requirements with the paradigm characteristics such as modality, responsiveness, convertibility, integrability, diagnosability and customisation. A perspective of RMS for future factories is presented that underlines those requirements which can be used as the key indicators of an RMS design strategy for existing MSs. In order to establish a suitable implementation approach determining the compatibility of RMSs requirements with the current and/or next generation of MSs, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) model is proposed through a real manufacturing case study. The design strategy is intended to be generic in structure and widely applicable to many firms having potentials moving towards RMS.