MANUFACTURING FLEXIBILITY MEASUREMENT - A FUZZY-LOGIC FRAMEWORK

Flexibility is recognized as an important feature in manufacturing. Th is paper suggests a knowledge-based methodology for the measurement of manufacturing flexibility, We claim that flexibility is an inherently vague notion and an essential requirement in its measurement is the i nvolvement of human perception and belief. Nine different flexibility types are measured, while the overall flexibility is given as the comb ined effect of these types, Knowledge is represented via IF[fuzzy ante cedents]THEN[fuzzy consequent] rules, which are used to model the func tional dependencies between operational characteristics such as setup time and cost, versatility part variety, transfer speed etc. The propo sed scheme is illustrated through an example.