An Axiomatic Design Approach to Production Path Enumeration in Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems

In recent years, many design approaches have been developed for automated manufacturing systems in the fields of reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS), holonic manufacturing systems (HMS), and multi-agent systems (MAS). One of the principle reasons for these developments has been to enhance the recongurability of a manufacturing system, allowing it to readily adapt to changes over time. However, to date, recongurability assessment has been limited. Hence, the efficacy of these design approaches remains quantitatively inconclusive. More recently, a systematic approach to reconfigurability measurement based upon the concepts of reconfiguration "potential" and reconfiguration "ease" has been developed using axiomatic design and design structure matrices respectively. The measures of reconfiguration potential called production degrees of freedom were specifically used to calculate production paths of a product line through a reconfigurable manufacturing system. This paper rearticulates the previous scalar-based calculation in terms of a axiomatic design matrix-based development founded in graph theory for three major benefits. First, this approach establishes a link between the RMS literature and graph theory where path enumeration has long been associated with network reliability and resilience. Second, the approach bases its measures strictly on the evolving system architecture variables in both function and form. In so doing, it roots itself in the established engineering design concept of the axiomatic design knowledge base for large flexible systems. Finally, the formulaic expressions lend themselves to significant computational savings.