A systemic and integrated approach to flexible manufacturing systems design

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) design is a complex problem which is concerned with the selection from a wide variety of available system configurations and control strategy alternatives in the light of several criteria (costs, production, flexibility etc.), many of which are difficult to quantify. Although there is a reasonable number of currently available modelling tools to be applied in FMS design, they are based on an erroneous approach, in which design is considered as a separated, local and myopic activity. Design is divided into isolated and unconnected subproblems whose individual solutions may result in a poor global solution. This paper describes a methodology of analysis and evaluation of FMS design competitive alternatives. It examines the use of an integrated, systemic, global, and user‐centred approach for solving the FMS design problem.