Solving Machine Relocation Problem in Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems

Dynamic and unpredictable market changes require manufacturers to design the manufacturing systems to meet changing customer’s demands dynamically. Not only meeting the demands, but producing good quality products at low cost and rapid response for dynamic market changes is mandatory in order to stay competitive. Reconfiguration manufacturing systems (RMS) appeared as a solution to a rapidly changing market demands. However in RMS, the main issue is related on relocating machines, which includes adding and removing machines, in order to satisfy the new demand each period. This paper presents a machine relocation problem related to the decision of adding/removing machines, while also considering the minimization of the total cost (machine adding cost and machine removal cost). The development of mathematical model for solving the machine relocation problem in RMS is proposed to solve the problem and a numerical example is presented and discussed.