FMS planning decisions, operating flexibilities, and system performance

Flexibility of manufacturing systems (FMS) has been conventionally associated with their ability to manufacture a variety of part types. However, flexible automation has introduced several process-oriented dimensions to flexibility. The impact of these dimensions on system performance needs to be better understood in order to evaluate the desirability of flexible automation for any company. This paper considers the role of system planning in determining operating flexibility and system performance. The authors argue that while the overall flexibility of any system is constrained by decisions made at the system design stage, the realized short-term flexibility depends significantly also upon planning decisions made during preproduction setup. Different planning objectives lead to different system configurations, and simultaneously yield varying levels of process-oriented flexibility. The authors also give a scheme for classifying different types of flexibilities, and use this scheme to present an illustrative comparison of conventional and flexible manufacturing methods for the two extremes of high volume/low variety and low volume/high variety manufacture. The authors observe that the inverse relationship that exists between flexibility and productivity for conventional manufacturing systems does not necessarily carry over to FMSs