The Research of Performance Evaluation System on Manufacturing System with Reconfigurable Configuration

Due to unpredictable global competition and high-frequency market changes, to stay competitive, manufacturers must possess some new and advanced manufacturing systems with reconfigurability in order to meet all these changes rapidly and cost-effectively. These manufacturing systems should adjust their production functionality and capacity in time by changing system configurations; hence, it is very important to analyze the impact of different configuration on manufacturing system performance. A systematic analysis method is needed to evaluate overall performance based on system hierarchy process. By using manufacturing system engineering theory, Boolean algebra, probability statistics theory, stream of variation methodology and so on, the impact of system configuration on performance is studied with respect to reliability, scalability, convertibility, quality, productivity and cost. A case study shows some preliminary conclusions for the performance analysis of different configurations of manufacturing system. These performance factors have been developed an integrated performance evaluation model as the criterion to select manufacturing system configuration, the elementary flow frame of this model is presented.