Approach for production planning in reconfigurable manufacturing systems

To stay competitive and to fulfill the changing market needs, manufacturing companies have to adapt their manufacturing systems in frequent and short intervals. Hence, changeable and reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS) are proposed and discussed in a multitude of research publications. While production planning becomes increasingly complex in this context, it has to be reliable and quick at the same time. Therefore, the performance and flexibility of manufacturing systems depends on actual and suitable planning data with high quality and wide range. In this context, a new approach for production planning in reconfigurable manufacturing systems is exposed in this paper. Data models, a configuration management and a sequential method for the resource planning help to integrate reconfigurable manufacturing systems' key characteristics in production planning and control (PPC). Finally a prototypical application scenario, for the evaluation and demonstration of the feasibility of the planning approach, is outlined. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).