Abstract:
The field of manufacturing is one of the oldest and the most established industry of the
world. It has been evolving and developing for many ages. The concept of using machines to
develop the products started in the early twentieth century. At the end of the twentieth century a
new manufacturing system known as RMS (reconfigurable manufacturing systems) was
introduced. It completely revolutionized the manufacturing setup with reconfigurable machines
which can adapt to the changes in the products while accommodating the machinability issues as
well.
As the ability to adapt increased, the demands for changes in the products increased as
well. Due to the rapid changes in the products these days, the process plans and the structures
required to develop the products following the process plans are changing at a rapid pace as well.
Traditionally, the approaches developed for the process plans and kinematic configurations of
RMS either focus on the process plans and then develop the corresponding kinematic
configurations or develop the kinematic configuration and then the process plan. Furthermore the
issues that these approach address make them unilateral: i.e. the approaches either minimize the
initial cost of production or the overall production rate while completely ignoring the overall
quality of the product.
This thesis is focused on improving the previous approaches and to address certain issues
regarding co-evolution. The approaches that have been improved are algorithmic in general,
however, a Petri-net model for a particular system has been proposed as well. Furthermore, an
algorithm for changing parts within the same part family is presented. It explores the complete
solution space for a particular part group. The application of the proposed algorithm is illustrated
by its implementation on automotive parts, having a set of machining features to be realized.
