Towards Decision-support for Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems Based on Computational Design Synthesis

The efficiency of production systems largely influences the profitability in the automotive industry. Recent trends challenge traditional manufacturing concepts and promote the adoption of more flexible approaches. Reconfigurable manufacturing systems have key characteristics that make them a potential solution for the prevalent issues. Decision makers can change the configuration of the manufacturing system to respond to changing requirements, though they are confronted with a large solution space. A case from industry illustrates the need for support of design decisions in this domain. Computational Design Synthesis generates an overview of the solution space and supports the decision maker in exploring the generated range by making trade-offs for many key performance indicators concurrently by generating sets of feasible solutions that can later be narrowed down by design constraints. Therefore, an investigation is proposed that explores the role of Computational Design Synthesis tools to support decision-making in the design of reconfigurable manufacturing systems and to show potential benefits. Furthermore, research questions are shown that are relevant for the development of such a tool and a suitable research methodology is suggested.