Towards modeling manufacturing flexibility information in metalcasting SMEs

Flexibility can be defined as the ability to respond efficiently to the changing demands of the customer and is different in SMEs (Small-to-Medium manufacturing Enterprises) than the traditional OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers). The presented work focuses on flexible manufacturing design problem on a systems level and aims at providing a common data structure as a reference for different methodologies and tools in this area. The developed framework translated into a relational database, has been interfaced with the main phases of the systems design in the metalcasting industry. A UML diagram has been developed to represent a method for modeling the product, process and quality within a flexible and scalable framework. The proposed framework could have a wider applicability since it is based on shared standards and previous general frameworks.