Design and reconfiguration models for dynamic cellular manufacturing to handle market changes

In today's competitive environment, customer demand has become increasingly diversified and customised. In order to stay competitive, the manufacturing companies need to adopt models that are able to rapidly adapt to market changes. The reconfigurable manufacturing system emerges from the scientific literature as a relevant manufacturing paradigm to meet changes and uncertainties in a dynamic manufacturing environment. This research proposes a cellular manufacturing system (CMS) with reconfigurable machines to handle the turbulent market conditions. The approach proposed concerns three mathematical models to support the design, reconfiguration and scheduling of the manufacturing system. The three linked models are developed in LINGO((R)) package. The main optimisation model concerns the design of the CMS, considering product demand not deterministic but described by several discrete probability scenarios. Then, an optimisation sub-model has been developed to manage the reconfiguration at fixed periods. An allocation model is used to allocate the jobs to the manufacturing cells. The proposed approach is compared to a model without reconfiguration activities. A further configuration of the models is the possibility of using remainder cells. The simulation results show that the proposed approach is a promising methodology to support the dynamic CMSs with reconfigurable machines.