Design of flexible transfer lines in dynamic market environments: a configuration approach

Shortening product life cycles leads competing companies to continually realise new products or modifying the existing ones; this is one of the major issues in production system design. According to changes in product features, production systems need to be properly configured or reconfigured to efficiently tackle new production requirements. This paper illustrates a method for designing multi-product flexible transfer lines and represents a step toward the creation of a tool that supports manufacturers in making configuration choices. The paper reports the application of the developed approach to industrial cases to design machining transfer line producing a mix of mechanical parts.