Abstract
The international situation is changing rapidly and information technologies are evolving faster in recent years. As a result, requirements for production have become widely diverged and highly sophisticated. Production flexibility is also required to enable the development of single manufacturing machines, manufacturing lines and factories utilizing supply chain management. This is one of the key enablers for meeting the challenges of global competition. In this paper, researches on the concepts of flexibility are first reviewed. Then, several examples of flexible assembly systems are demonstrated. The production systems introduced are those that the first author was involved in during their development for practical use in the 1980s and 1990s. They are all production systems that correspond to quantitative fluctuation in the extension of mixed production systems. The production systems are evaluated and compared with conventional systems using a performance function, "Life-cycle Cost Analysis" and a simulation technique under the assumption of several fluctuation patterns for production volume. In addition, in order to appropriately identify the different flexible production systems, a definition of "Reconfigurability" is proposed. The results show that the flexible production systems and simulation technique contribute to more efficient production management. Additionally, "Reconfigurability" describes the characteristics of the flexible production systems.
