Life Cycle Design of Manufacturing Systems for Enhancing Facility Reusability in System Reconfiguration

快速有效地适应大批量变化和产品的剧烈变化是当前制造活动面临的最重要的问题之一。由于快速的技术进步和市场趋势的变化，新产品经常被推向市场，其销量波动很大。全球化市场的竞争加速了这种趋势。耐用的量产产品，如汽车，需要大规模的生产设施，很难应对这些变化。如何降低“生产惯性”以获得较短的生产设备重构周期和相关成本是一个关键问题。与其构建全新的制造系统，不如重用已有的系统组件，并重新配置现有的系统以适应新的需求。在满足客户需求的同时，有效地重新利用现有的可用资源…要实现可持续和环境友好的制造，需要更多的资源。如果允许任意更改产品，实现现有制造系统的高效和可持续重新配置并非易事。产品设计与制造系统重构的集成是解决这一难题的有效途径。本研究的目的是建立制造系统与关联产品之间的一般关系，并探索一种系统化的产品设计方法，该方法不需要对制造系统进行实质性的重构，并允许现有设施的高度可重用性。确定了对制造资源变化有很大影响的特定产品变化。并将对设施变化影响较小的各种产品进行分组。如果有效地利用这样的产品组概念，就有可能减少由于客户需求而导致的产品差异对制造资源的影响，并增加设施重复使用的可能性。重要的是，通过消除产品和制造资源不必要的表面差异，并通过关注产品和制造资源之间的本质依赖来研究这种关系。通过对汽车零部件的实例分析，验证了该方法的有效性

It is one of the most important issues for recent manufacturing activities to quickly and efficiently adapt to large production volume variations and radical changes of products. Due to the rapid technological advances and changes of market trends, new products are frequently introduced into the market, and their sale volumes heavily fluctuate. Such trends are accelerated by competition in a globalized market. Durable mass-production products, such as automobiles, require large-scale production facilities, and it is very difficult to cope with these changes. It is a critical issue how to reduce "production inertia" to achieve short lead time and relevant cost for reconfiguration of production facilities.Instead of constructing completely new manufacturing systems, it is mandatory to reuse already existing system components, and to reconfigure exiting systems to be adapted to new requirements. While satisfying customers' demands, efficient re-utilization of existing available resources … More is strongly required for achieving sustainable and environmentally benign manufacturing.If arbitrary changes of products are allowed, it is not easy to achieve efficient and sustainable reconfiguration of existing manufacturing systems. Integration of product design with manufacturing system reconfiguration is an effective way to solve this difficulty. The objective of this study is to establish general relationship between manufacturing systems and associated products, and to investigate a systematized method for designing a group of products, which does not require substantial reconfiguration of manufacturing systems, and allows high reusability of existing facilities.For this purpose, a relationship between product variations and associated manufacturing resource changes is established. Particular product variations which have a strong influence on manufacturing resource changes are identified. And varied products which have small effects on facility changes are grouped. If such a product group concept is effectively utilized, it is possible to reduce the influence of product variations due to customer requirements on manufacturing resources, and to increase the possibility of facility reuse. It is important to investigate such relationships by eliminating unnecessary superficial variations of products and manufacturing resources, and by focusing on essential dependency between products and manufacturing resources. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been evaluated by a case study for automobile components Less