ABSTRACT
Increasing need for responsive manufacturing in competitive global markets presents a challenge for assembly systems. Smart reconfigurable assembly systems offer a response to this challenge, addressing uncertainties in manufacturing when subjected to dynamic product mix and volumes amongst others. Reconfigurability is a purposeful change to assembly systems through the addition, removal, or rearrangement of assembly operations, processes, functions and system components. Following an empirical study of assembly reconfigurations in a real use case, a two-phase methodology for engineering smart reconfigurable assembly systems is developed and presented in this paper. The two-phase approach consists of primary reconfiguration and secondary reconfiguration. The primary reconfiguration allows a strategic approach to reconfigurable manufacturing in which strategic changes are made to an assembly system. Operational changes are accommodated in the secondary reconfiguration. The proposed methodology is piloted in a contract electronics manufacturing environment and results demonstrate its potential benefits for the industry.
