## 5 Conclusions  
With a new method and its implementation, this work showed how a higher utilization of RMS in the field of non-PCB, micro-assembled products could be achieved. This was accomplished with an enhanced conceptual design phase in the product development process. Product designers can model an assembly sequence by defining assembly steps with input and output components, as well as already known properties for both the components and their processing. Unknown properties at this time in development need not to be specified. As a result, machine configurations for a specific RMS can be generated that should satisfy the needs of the modeled assembly. By selecting some of these machine configurations, a collection of properties can be set that could act as a dynamic guideline for the product and the process development. By using this method, both disciplines, product, as well as process development, could simultaneously work on a new product without losing too many degrees of freedom regarding their design. The finished product and process could later be executed on the chosen RMS without the need for excessive redesign loops or expensive special-built machinery.  
This would only work with well defined databases that inherit processing knowledge. Each assembly could be done with a chain of operations called an assembly operation sequence. The corresponding database allowed the automated transformation of assembly sequences into assembly operation sequences. A second database was able to map those operations to suitable machine parts of an RMS. The combination of both databases made the automated generation of machine configurations possible. The method pointed out ways such databases could be systematically and successfully generated. With PlaTooMA, a software tool was developed that was able to prove the feasibility of both the method and implementation. It was built as a modern web application using state-of-the-art technologies. As a use case, OurPlant RMS was successfully applied.  
**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, C.G.; methodology, C.G.; software, C.G.; validation, C.G., K.-P.F., B.W., and A.Z.; formal analysis, C.G.; investigation, C.G.; resources, C.G.; data curation, C.G.; writing, original draft preparation, C.G.; writing, review and editing, C.G., K.-P.F., B.W., and A.Z.; visualization, C.G.; supervision, B.W.; project administration, C.G.; funding acquisition, K.-P.F. All authors read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
**Funding:** This research was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany in the framework of \"Methodische Werkzeuge zur Erhohung der Wandlungsfahigkeit von Mikromontage-Anlagen bei Entwicklung, Konfiguration und Monitoring (MIKROKOMO)\", Grant Number 02P15A120.  
**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.  
The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript:  
\begin{tabular}{l l} BPMS & Base plate mounting space \\ CPN & Colored Petri nets \\ DFM & Design for manufacturability \\ HMS & Head mounting space \\ HTML & Hypertext Markup Language \\ HTTP & Hypertext Transfer Protocol \\ JSON & JavaScript Object Notation \\ MBSE & Model based system engineering \\ MPD & Modular product design \\ MM & Model-to-model \\ NIST & National Institute of Standards and Technologies \\ npm & Node package manager \\ OAM & Open assembly model \\ OPM & Object-process methodology \\ ORM & Object-relational mapper \\ PCB & Printed circuit board \\ PlaTooMA & Planning tool for micro assembly \\ REST & Representational State Transfer \\ RMS & Reconfigurable manufacturing system \\ SAPB & Systematic approach of Pahl and Beitz \\ SysML & Systems Modeling Language \\ TDD & Top-down design \\ \end{tabular}