Automated shop floor reconfiguration and process integration: towards product driven manufacturing systems

Flexible manufacturing systems are crucial in today’s rapidly evolving manufacturing landscape, characterized by supply chain disruptions, shorter product lifecycles, and diverse customer demands. Introducing new products necessitates extensive planning efforts, including price estimates, production cost evaluation and ensuring resilience. This paper presents a comprehensive approach through an integrated digital toolchain for reconfiguration planning in manufacturing companies, from production feasibility to shop floor execution. The solution leverages data space connectors to facilitate information exchange between customers and Modular Production (MP) environments. Key features include the STEP decomposition, resource capability matching, automated assembly line reconfiguration and balancing, as well as the automated integration and execution of manufacturing processes on the shop floor. This toolchain aims to enable automated data exchange, coordinated order planning, and efficient shop floor operations, allowing manufacturers to adapt to market changes while maintaining cost-effectiveness and resilience.