Systematic design of Flexible manufacturing cells (FMCs)

What is it about?

It is about the design of a flexible manufacturing cells (FMCs). The design of most FMCs requires to deal in four interrelated design domains. These are (1)-Design of methods and procedures, (2)- Design and selection of mechanical systems, part, tools etc. (3)- Design of Cell Controller architecture, (4)- Designing integration and interfacing of tools, sensors etc. This paper concentrates on domain 2. It provides a suitable systematic design methodology for solving the design problems in domain 2 to ease FMC design.

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Why is it important?

The current product design methodologies have been found to be not suitable for the domain 2 due to the availability of a high number of sub-functions. Therefore, a generic design methodology for the mechanical part of a flexible manufacturing cell (FMC) has been developed based on the available mechanical machine/product design methodologies and tools. The development of FMCs are rather complicated and expensive. Any failures caused during the design of one domain will affect the performance of the overall system as the design domains are interrelated. Therefore the proposed methodology better leads the designer during the design. It is easy to apply as it is based on to the current machine design methodologies.