Title: Justification of reconfigurable manufacturing systems selection using extended Brown-Gibson model and fuzzy TOPSIS

Authors: M. Maniraj; V. Pakkirisamy

Addresses: Department of Production Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, 620 015, India ' Department of Production Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, 620 015, India

Abstract: Reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS) is a new manufacturing concept that allows flexibility in not only manufacturing a variety of parts but also in changing the system itself. RMS is designed for rapid adjustment of production capacity and functionality, in response to new circumstances, by rearrangement or change of its components. However, high amount of investment in such new manufacturing systems is questioned. This paper attempts to evaluate and justify the investment using an extended Brown-Gibson model. Both the subjective and objective factors are converted into consistent and dimensionless indices to measure the manufacturing system preference measure (MSPM). The Brown-Gibson Model is used to evaluate the objective factor measures by addressing both cost and time decisions. The subjective factors are evaluated using fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS).

Keywords: reconfigurable manufacturing systems; RMS selection; extended Brown-Gibson model; manufacturing system selection; preference measures; MSPM; fuzzy TOPSIS; investment justification.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2015.068995

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2015 Vol.20 No.1, pp.1 - 21

Published online: 24 Apr 2015 *

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