Design methodology for manufacturing automation system reconfiguration

The fluctuating customer demand especially in product requirements and system specifications these days requires system design engineers to configure and reconfigure the manufacturing system regularly. This paper elaborates a configuration study of a manufacturing system as well as illustrating basic design methodology of capturing user requirements and specifications for flexible reconfiguration in manufacturing automation system. The configuration study was conducted to accumulate various design outcomes from a given manufacturing process. The manufacturing process chosen for the study describes a simple yet easy to understand process in which groups of system design engineers were required to produce potential design configurations suitable for the process. The outcomes are then utilized to formulate a general rules for the configuration and reconfiguration methodology. The methodology presented is based on the steps and work descriptions provided by the user requirements and specifications. In order to simplify the configuration and reconfiguration works, method of capturing user requirements and specifications is required. The later idea of undergoing this research is to find suitable method to capture and manipulate the user requirements and specifications and later provide an optimum solution for the design of flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing automation system. Once completed, the methodology can be a value added advantage to the future of configuration and reconfiguration framework for the manufacturing automation system. In addition to that, the industry will benefit from the outcomes of the research by having the ability to optimize the system and minimizing the risk of investment of new system at a faster pace.