Cost modelling for micro manufacturing logistics when using a grid of equiplets

Abstract

This paper focuses on manufacturing of ‘Hybrid Microsystems’. Manufacturing of microsystems for niche markets, mainly sensors and actuators, usually struggles with the application of manual- or automated manufacturing. If automated production is applied, it is mostly done with reconfigurable manufacturing equipment. Reconfigurable equipment has been designed to meet rapid adaption in structure, as well as in hardware and software components. In this paper, a new reconfigurable manufacturing approach is used to meet the production requirements for this market segment. The solution combines hard- and software to optimize for flexibility and cost-effectiveness. The system uses small machines, so called ‘Equiplets’, each replacing one or two operators. The equiplets are placed in a ‘Manufacturing Grid’. When using grid manufacturing in combination with equiplets, the production floor can be reconfigured in a more flexible and agile manner. The investigations addresses cost modelling to determine the best way to transfer parts through the grid manufacturing process. Directly coupled production systems are compared to systems with buffers between the manufacturing stations. Though buffers require extra investments, the gain in uptime of buffered systems is in many cases large enough to justify the investments.