Reusability Assessment for Manufacturing Systems

Manufacturing firms have begun reconfiguring and reusing production systems to save resources consumed on system changes that were brought about by the high product variety and frequent model change. As a result, assessing manufacturing system reusability has become an important issue. This paper introduces intrinsic and effective reusability of manufacturing systems and proposes quantitative metrics to assess them. Using an automotive assembly system as example, this paper also explores how system configurations and task allocation affect reusability. Insights from such a study will help improve manufacturing system reuse for families as well as generations of products.