On the Evaluation of the Flexibility Effort of the Electrical Equipment Production System

In a competitive economical environment, the problem of optimizing the manufacturing of an electrical equipment production system becomes stringent. It is well known that electrical equipment is characterized by a typological variety from a dimensional and technological point of view. Therefore, establishing a typological group of products, having morphological and technological similarities, can be vital in terms of minimizing the costs or duration of changing a system's technical condition when other equipment is launched into production. The structure of the typological group must be established applying specific filters and the affinity between its components, based on statistical parameters, must be evaluated. In this context, using a Matlab application, a specific procedure for checking the consistency and affinity of a typological group is proposed. A graphical interface is developed, allowing the user to select the criteria for the product characterization, to input the criteria's weighting coefficients and to calculate the statistical parameters. Based on the Pearson correlation coefficients computed for empirical values of the weighting coefficients, it is proven the coefficients' influence on the degree of association and affinity between the group products. The degree of association or affinity between two products can help establishing the succession of products launched into production, in order to obtain the lowest manufacturing cost.