Executable framework for reconfigurable flexible manufacturing system
Creators: name: A Rahman, Muhamad
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024

description: Shorter product life-cycles, variable product demand, and unpredictable manufacturing system trends have forced manufacturing company to operate flexibly in order to adapt to changing requirements. Traditional manufacturing systems, such as job shops and flow lines, cannot handle such environments. Flexible reconfigurable manufacturing, which incorporates the flexibility and reconfigurability of job shops and the high production rate of flow lines, has been seen as a promising alternative for such cases. Although flexible reconfigurable provides significant benefits, the design of flexible reconfigurable manufacturing systems is complicated in solving real-life problems. Existing design methods employ the importance of human involvement with high experience, higher cost and longer time. This conventional method requires more human involvement and well-experienced personnel. Hence, it is timely require to provide a specification for the new manufacturing automation system configuration and conduct redrawing using Computer Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application (CATIA) or other drawing software packages. The research on a modular framework for flexible reconfigurable manufacturing system is a crucial and important step towards this dilemma. There is a growing need for flexible manufacturing system to be reconfigured and re-used more efficiently in order to maximize return on investment. This research must aims to create a new method in developing a highly flexible manufacturing system which will be easily reconfigurable for upcoming production needs.<br><br>The main idea of this research is to develop a framework and solution approach for configuring manufacturing automation systems that address the time, cost and experience issues. In the beginning, this research has implemented a series of intelligent algorithms for planning a sorting production line using a visualization capability project to engineers. The work investigates the data requirements for the support of analyzing early design data to provide reference for creating manufacturing scenarios that can be used to support investments in manufacturing facilities such as machines and peripherals equipment. The outcome of this component has been inserted in the framework for advanced reference in manufacturing system. This research presents a framework suitable for intelligently configuring automation system. This framework addresses the problem of planning specifically for sorting and assembly tasks. The specific problem addressed in this research is a sequence of different level of sorting and assembly instructions. Selective information about the objects involved in the sorting and assembly instruction will determine the final sorting and assembly configuration based on which commands to a system that would realize the generated configuration.<br><br>In general, this research examines the modelling requirements of line production, system actions (SA) models, associated automation system components (SC) and other manufacturing facilities. In this study, an automated configuration platform has been developed using Visual Basic (VB) for the graphical user interface (GUI) and the programming parts. In addition to that CATIA software has been utilized to create a library of components provides the system configuration.<br><br>The outcome of the works proved that the developed framework can lessen the time, reduce the cost and eliminate the need for experience personnel while conducting manufacturing automation system configuration. This project has successfully developed a novel method of reconfiguring automation manufacturing facilities prior to investment. This research hopes the industry will benefit from the outcome of this research by having the ability to optimize the system and to minimize the risk of investment.