The design and development of a reconfigurable manufacturing system

Abstract

As a result of increasing global industrial competition, it has become essential for world economies to implement an effective industrial strategy that reliably and quickly addresses sudden changes in product design. An emerging strategy that might enable industries to cope with rapidly changing product specifications is based on reconfiguring the manufacturing systems. In this paper, the authors present the development of a manufacturing system that will be easily reconfigurable. The developed manufacturing system exhibits the ability and potential for a rapid alteration of manufacturing capacity and the fast integration of new products into the existing manufacturing system.