Products Scheduling in Reconfigurable Manufacturing System Considering the Responsiveness Index

Reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) is a recent manufacturing paradigm, which can easily adjust its capacity and functionality for rapid responsiveness to sudden changes in the market. The core component of RMS is called reconfigurable machine tool (RMT), which has a modular structure. The RMTs can be reconfigured into many configurations. This ability allows RMS to manufacture many types of products with high quantities. In this paper, the scheduling of products in a multi-product line is fulfilled based on three criteria: profit over cost, due date, and reconfiguration responsiveness index. The latter is the combination of reconfiguration time and reconfiguration reliability of machines. An integrated approach of maximum deviation method (MDM) and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach called technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is proposed as a solution approach for getting the optimal scheduling of the products to be manufactured in RMS. Weights of criteria have been calculated using MDM and ranking of products is obtained using TOPSIS. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the scheduling of products in RMS.