Towards an assessment criterion of reconfigurable manufacturing systems within the automotive industry

To increase changeability and reconfigurability of manufacturing systems, while maintaining cost-efficiency and environmental sustainability they need to be designed in accordance to the need for change. Since companies often need to convert existing manufacturing systems to handle variation, implementation of reconfigurable manufacturing systems calls for an analysis of the current system to understand to what extent they fulfil reconfigurability characteristics. This requires an assessment of the needs for reconfigurability as well as assessment of the existing ability to reconfigure the manufacturing system. Although a lot of reconfigurable manufacturing system assessment models are proposed in theory there is an evident knowledge gap pertaining to what extent the existing systems in the industry are in achieving reconfigurability. The purpose with this paper is to propose an assessment criterion for existing manufacturing systems to measure reconfigurability and their readiness to change with respect to products and volume variations. Based on a literature review of existing reconfigurability assessment models and a case study within the automotive industry, a criterion is developed and tested to analyze how reconfigurable a system is and to decide which parameters that need more attention to achieve higher degree of reconfigurability.