Reconfigurable assembly system configuration design approaches for product change

The current context of quick changes in terms of production types and volumes increasingly impacts assembly system design. Deciding on an optimal system configuration for a mix of different products and responding to uncertain evolutions of the market demand are crucial challenges for future manu-facturing. This article reviews the main strategies dealing with variety and product change in assembly system design. Several classifications, based on different paradigm identifications, are reported throughout this article. We distinguish approaches about reconfigurable assembly system design from those aiming to facilitate system reconfiguration using integrated design (product selection, product design or process design). Focusing on assembly system level, different configurations levels of representations, and also configuration perspective definitions are highlighted, namely physical layout (arrangement of workstations) and logical layout (task assignment, with or without resources selections). For these different viewpoints, common strategies of configuration design for variety are identified. Finally, by encompassing variable demand scenarios in configuration decision activities, we point out the interest of reconfigurability paradigm for product change. Configuration design methods oriented system reconfigurability are classified, and the link between product change and reconfigurable assembly system is detailed. Thus, the influence of product family or variant evolution on configuration choice is reported. Based on configuration perspective, demand evolution, reconfigurability criteria and product-configuration link, we give an original study of assembly system design for a variable market demand, integrating different taxonomies.