Reconfigurability Principles in the Design and Management of Advanced Production Systems. Integrazione di principi di riconfigurabilità nella progettazione e gestione di sistemi di produzione avanzati

In the last years, production companies are facing radical changes forcing to improve their standard in product and process design and management. High flexibility, dynamic market demand, increasing customization, high-quality products, flexible batches and short product life cycles are among the key factors affecting the modern industrial and market context and characterizing the emerging Industry 4.0 era. These trends inevitably affect both the production strategy to adopt and the production system design. From the production strategy viewpoint, industrial companies attempt to meet every customers' request and satisfy their individual needs. For these reasons, they are switching from Make-to-Stock (MTS) and Make-to-Order (MTO) strategies to Delay Product Differentiation (DPD). DPD is a hybrid strategy that strives to reconcile the dual needs of high-variety and quick response time, by using the concept of product platforms, de?ned as a set of sub-systems and interfaces that form a common structure from which a stream of derivative product variants can be ef?ciently produced and developed. A large number of industrial companies introduced product platforms as tool to reach the bene?ts of DPD, e.g. Sony, for the development of the Walkman, Kodak, Black & Decker and Hewlett-Packard are relevant applications. From the production system viewpoint, traditional manufacturing systems i.e. Dedicated Manufacturing Systems (DMSs), Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs) and Cellular Manufacturing Systems (CMSs), show increasing limits in adapting to the most recent market features. Such systems can be effectively used to mass-produce product platforms but advanced manufacturing solutions are needed to produce the remaining components necessary to reconfigure the product platforms into the final variants (Huang et al., 2019). In the last few years, Next Generation Manufacturing Systems (NGMSs), i.e. Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMSs) and Reconfigurable Assembly Systems (RASs), rise to respond to the dynamic market changes. This is achieved by designing both the system and the machines for adjustable structure in response to the dynamic market demand and to the introduction of new products. Aim of this dissertation is to proposing innovative methods, models and tools aided at including the emerging principles of reconfigurability in designing products and advanced production systems, i.e. manufacturing and assembly, to improve the overall performances of the industrial plants. The achievement of these goals is driven not only by a direct interest of modern industrial companies, but also by the strong commitment of a great number of research councils located in many areas of the world through funding projects. Within the context of European projects, relevant examples are the EU-funded projects 'Rapid reconfiguration of flexible production systems through capability-based adaptation, auto-configuration and integrated tools for production planning' promoted in 2015, 'Skill-based propagation of plug-and produce devices in reconfigurable manufacturing systems' and 'Adaptive automation in assembly for blue collar workers satisfaction in evolvable context' promoted in 2016. The research activity is developed according to a research framework, which highlights three main research areas: (1) design of modular product platforms, (2) design of reconfigurable manufacturing systems and (3) design of reconfigurable assembly systems. Each chapter of this dissertation is devoted to a specific area of the defined research framework and, after revising the main literature and identifying the research trends, illustrates the research activities as well as the main results and findings. The explored research topics lead to theoretical, methodological and practical contributions of help to support real-world industrial companies in facing modern emerging trends.