CEGSDISCUSSIONPAPERSERIES

No. 2014-CEGS-04

An Insight into the Role of Manufacturing Engineering in the Designand Evaluation of Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems(RMS)

Mihail Marinov
横浜国立大学 成長戦略研究センター リサーチャー
2015 年 3 月

横浜国立大学

成長戦略研究センター

Center for Economic Growth Strategy (CEGS)
Yokohama National University
79-4 Tokiwadai Hodogaya-ku
Yokohama 240-8501 JAPANCEGS1

Discussion paper
An Insight into the Role of Manufacturing Engineering in the Designand Evaluation of Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS)
Mihail Marinov

1. Introduction
In the last three decades a growing body of knowledge about product development
and manufacturing in the automotive industry has emerged. One of the major contributions inthis field has been done by Clark and Fujimoto (1991) whose work represents a lengthy anddetailed study of product development in the world automotive industry. In their book theydescribe the different approaches to product development that can be found in different
manufacturing companies around the world. Having done so, Clark and Fujimoto (1991)
provide a convincing explanation of how and why the Japanese automakers have became
performance leaders in the automotive industry and also give useful advice to thosemanufacturers who need to radically improve their competitiveness. This competitiveness
continues today in some forms (Fujimoto and Nobeoka, 2006; Thomke, 2006; Higashi andHeller, 2012).
Interest in automotive manufacturing has generated a significant number of works aswell but probably the most influential among these works is Womack et al. (1990). Published ata time when Toyota was roughly half the size of the then world leader, General Motors, thisbook revealed to a wide Western audience the Toyota Production System (TPS) or leanmanufacturing as it is labeled in the West, created a wave of interest throughout the automotiveindustry and paved the way for lean manufacturing to become a benchmark for performance.
However, Womack et al. (1990) and subsequent works (Monden, 1993; Womack and Jones,
1996; Liker, 2004; Hino, 2006; Spear, 2008) also make the strong argument that “lean”, and byextension TPS, is not simply for manufacturing, nor was it ever intended to be.

2The major works in the field of automotive industry, like the ones mentioned above,
are mainly concerned with two aspects of the transition from raw materials to products: productdesign1) and manufacturing. This approach may seem reasonable from the point of view thatboth product design and manufacturing have a specific output: product design provides theblueprints of the products that are to be manufactured, and manufacturing provides the products
based on the blueprints drawn by product design. These specific outputs (blueprints andproducts) naturally make the performance (quality, cost, delivery, etc.) of both product design
and manufacturing easy to quantify and measure.
However, one does not need to be an expert in engineering to understand that
blueprints do not turn themselves into products. There are also manufacturing systems,
processes, machines, tools and equipment that need to be researched and developed before
manufacturing can start. In other words, in addition to product design and manufacturing, there
is another important aspect of the transition from raw materials to products which is known in
the literature, as well as among practitioners, as "manufacturing engineering" which is also
sometimes called "production engineering" or "process engineering". These terms sometimes
denote separate activities in some companies where "production engineering" tends to refer tomore upstream activities while "manufacturing engineering" tends to refer to more downstream
activities. In order to be consistent with the majority of the relevant literature in English, in thisstudy the term "manufacturing engineering" is used to cover both activities.
Product and process historically have been in the center of academic and practitioner
interest, however in recent years there has been a growing number of works that examine how
the productivity of existing production lines can be improved and how new production lines canbe introduced more efficiently (Jonsson et al., 2004; Nakaoka et al., 2005). Both tasks, at leastin Japanese companies, tend to be important responsibilities of manufacturing engineering(Shibata, 2009; Whitney et al., 2007; Koike, 2008). The transfer of manufacturing processes tooverseas facilities of Japanese companies has been going on for some time, however in Japan, inrecent years there appears to be an increasing focus on the transfer of manufacturing
1)

In this paper product design refers to product engineering, sekkei in Japanese.
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engineering processes to overseas facilities (Shibata, 2009; Heller et al., 2013).
Yet, compared with the volume of literature on product design and manufacturing,
there is little research that addresses the tasks and functions of manufacturing engineering. The
importance of manufacturing engineering has been pointed out by Nakaoka et. al. (2005),
however, it is difficult to find detailed research on how manufacturing engineering work isperformed, with a few notable exceptions that tend to focus on Japan in general, and Toyota inparticular.
Understanding the importance of manufacturing engineering may be further facilitatedby examining suppliers. Most of the literature discusses manufacturing engineering in OEMs
while suppliers tend to be away from the focus of research or amalgamated together with OEMs.
Suppliers however, do add value for end-users through the products they manufacture anddeliver, and especially in Japan they are heavily involved in new product development which
may affect manufacturing engineering as well.
Moreover, and what is more important, the research on manufacturing engineeringthat has been done so far, while examining manufacturing engineering from the perspectives ofoperations research and human resource management, has not clearly placed the tasks andfunctions of manufacturing engineering in the perspective of the two major subsets (strategy andorganization) of the management studies.
Some of the literature from the 1990s and 2000s seems to examine manufacturing
engineering mainly from the perspective of problem-solving techniques and mathematicalmethods applied in the pursuit of improved decision-making and production efficiency, as well
as overseeing, redesigning and controlling production processes which is closely related to theactual work of manufacturing engineers but more in the realm of systems science and operations
research. Other works examine manufacturing engineering in the light of how individuals
construct organizational structures, processes and practices and how these in turn create
relations between individuals. Therefore, it can be assumed that the "lenses" through which
researchers have been looking at manufacturing engineering are predominantly operational orrelated to human resource management, with some organizational aspects present.

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This paper, however, provides an insight into one of the important aspects ofmanufacturing engineering work, namely, the design and evaluation of reconfigurable
manufacturing systems (RMS).

2. Characteristics of reconfigurable manufacturing systems
To cope with the difficulties associated with existing systems and the desire to
respond rapidly to variations in market demand (mix and quantity), Koren et al. (1996, 1999)
proposed the next generation manufacturing system called the Reconfigurable Manufacturing
System (RMS). RMS was introduced as a new paradigm for a production system that effectively
responds to rapid changes in the market place. It comprises the traits of existing systems, i.e. thehigh throughput of dedicated manufacturing systems (DMS) with the high flexibility of flexible
manufacturing systems (FMS) (Mehrabi et al. 2000). RMS is distinguished from FMS andDMS by various factors such as capacity, functionality, cost, etc. as shown in Table 1 (Singh atal. 2007, p 3166).
Table 1 Comparison of DMS, FMS and RMS
DMS

FMS

RMS

Adjustable machine structure

X

X

O

Scalability

X

O

O

Flexibility

X

O

O

Simultaneously operating tools

O

X

O

Low cost

O

X

O

High throughput

O

X

O

High machine utilization

O

X

O

A reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) is "one designed at the outset for rapidchange in its structure, as well as its hardware and software components, in order to quickly
adjust its production capacity and functionality within a part family in response to sudden
market changes or intrinsic system changes" (Koren et al. 2005, p. 2). RMS are "regarded as5systems consisting of separate blocks or centers which can be added to or removed from thesystem" (Nagarur 1992, p. 801). Koren's definition also implies that the structure of the system
as well as of its machines and controls (Koren et al. 2001) can be rapidly changed in response tomarket changes (demand and products) .
According to Mehrabi et al (2000) and Koren (2005), RMS possess the following key
characteristics:
Modularity - the compartmentalization of operational functions and requirements intoquantifiable units that can be transacted between alternate production schemes to fit a given
set of needs.

Integrability - the ability to integrate modules rapidly and precisely by a set ofmechanical,informational,andcontrol

interfaces

thatenableintegrationandcommunication.
Diagnosability - the ability to automatically read the current state of a system andcontrols so as to detect and diagnose the root-cause of defects, and subsequently correct
operational defects quickly.

Scalability - the ability to easily change existing production capacity by rearranging anexisting production system, and/or changing the production capacity of reconfigurable
components (e.g., machines) within that system.

Convertibility - the ability to easily transform the functionality of existing systems,machines, and controls to suit new production requirements.

Customization - the ability to adapt the customized (non-general) flexibility of
production systems and machines to meet new requirements within a family of similar
products.

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2. Review of methods for evaluation of FMS and RMS
The work and literature in the design, evaluation, justification and implementation ofRMS and FMS has been very broad. Research methodologies have included case studies,empirical research, analytical, and simulation modeling, to help understand and address theissues of the RMS and FMS justification and evaluation by organizations.
Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS) and Flexible Manufacturing Systems(FMS) have different goals. FMS aims at increasing the variety of parts produced. RMS aims atincreasing the speed of responsiveness to markets and customers (Mehrabi et al. 2000). RMS isalso flexible, but only to a limited extent — its flexibility is confined to only that necessary toproduce a part family. This is the “customized flexibility” or the customization characteristic,
which is not the general flexibility that FMS offers. The advantages of customized flexibility are
faster throughput and higher production rates (Koren at al. 1999). Other important advantagesof RMS are rapid scalability to the desired volume and convertibility, which are obtained withinreasonable cost to manufacturers (Koren 2005). The best application of a FMS is found in
production of small sets of products. With RMS, however, production volume may vary fromsmall to large (Goebel 2004).

According to Sarkis and Talluri (1999, p. 2928), the advantages and benefits ofintroducing an FMS and the reasons for the lack of adoption of these systems include:

Table 6. Advantages of FMS and reasons for the lack of adoption

Advantages

Reasons for the lack of adoption

added flexibility

high investment hurdle rates

higher quality

the high costs and risks of the systems

more rapid short-term and long-term cycle requirements for more operational andtimes
managerial expertiseand sometimes, smaller production costs short-term performance measures anddue to labor and materials savings
management
inappropriate costing approaches

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The authors also point out that strategic justification models that incorporate manyfactors, strategic and operational, tangible and intangible, help address some of these issues.

Again Sarkis and Talluri (1999) propose a pair-wise comparison model, which
considers both qualitative and quantitative factors, for evaluation and selection of an alternativeFMS. The quantitative factors include two inputs: a) capital and operating costs and b) floor
space, and three outputs: a) improvements in work-in-process, b) percentage of tardy jobs, andc) yield, defined as throughput minus scrap and rework. The qualitative factors include oneinput, vendor reputation, and one output, worker approval. Each of these qualitative inputs andoutputs are critical intangible factors, which are not usually explicitly included in evaluation
models for FMS. Both these qualitative variables are measured on an ordinal scale of 1 to 5.

Chang and Tsou (1993) proposed a chance-constraints linear programming model forthe economic evaluation of FMS and argued that the majority of the manufacturing companies
use traditional cost accounting which divides the total manufacturing expenses into cost of
goods sold, operating and non-operating expenses, and income taxes. They point out, however,that productivity, quality and flexibility "which are critical measures for considering adoption ofa new FMS" (Chang and Tsou 1993, p. 160) are not included in traditional cost accounting. In
their model they incorporate the following costs:
1) Manufacturing cost consisting ofa) Set-upb) Materialc) Labord) Machinef) Spaceg) Softwareh) Preventioni) Failuree) Tool

2) Opportunity cost consisting of:a) Waiting timeb) Idle time3) And two separate cost categories:a) Holding costb) Back-order8In a case study of a manufacturing plant in the UK which produces around 2000
similar product variants and which belongs to a US-based company and a global supplier of abroad range of modules and components to the motor vehicle industry, Abdi and Labib (2011)concluded that reconfiguration time and reusability of RMS for both capacity (defined as
maximum production rate available) and functionality (defined as the operational degree ofswitching from one product to another with different process requirements) are highly crucial.
Therefore, reconfiguration time and reusability "must be carefully optimised as any disruption
in the performing elements cause enormous impact on the system performance, particularly on
process reconfigurability" (Abdi and Labib 2011, p. 1333).

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