1Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies. chowdary@eng.uwi.tt
2Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Performance modeling and evaluation of manufacturing systems help decision makers at higher levels to conduct an economic feasibility analysis for expansion/diversification of the system. Manufacturing system design, with flexibility and related issues, is a complex phenomenon, which is concerned with the selection from a wide variety of available system configurations and control strategy alternatives in the light of several criteria (flexibility, quality, productivity, costs etc.), many of which are difficult to quantify. For evaluation and selection of manufacturing systems here an attempt has been made through a decision support system by developing and combining models such as integrated manufacturing performance measurement, multi-criteria evaluation and ranking, and a knowledge based expert system approaches. The usefulness of the proposed decision support system for flexibility in manufacturing is demonstrated through a sample session.
flexibility, FMDSS, productivity, quality
