Product family formation based on optimal resource sequence for reconfigurable manufacturing system

Reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) is designed to meet dynamic market demands by changing function and capacity which is built around a product family. Therefore, the foundation for the success of designing RMS lies in the precise product family formation. This paper proposes a novel product family formation method based on optimal resource sequence. Instead of clustering products only by process similarity, the method derives the optimal resource sequence from the process of sharing resources. Then Produce-Process-Resource similarity coefficient is used for hierarchical clustering. The results show that when designing RMS for the product families obtained by this method, the average Overall Equipment Effectiveness is significantly improved.