Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS)

Flexible Manufacturing System is an important system in
Mechatronic Engineering. This system used in robot system to let the system run smoothly and better than days ago. Flexible Manufacturing System can be clarified as manufacturing system in which some amount of the flexibility to allow the system react in case of changes, can predicted or unpredicted. There are two categories of flexibility. They are the machine flexibility and the routing flexibility.

Machine flexibility has the ability to cover the system’s ability so that it can produce new product types. Besides that, it can also change the operation that executed on a part. Unlike machine flexibility, routing flexibility can use multiple machines to perform the same operation on a part. Furthermore, it can also absorb the changes of large-scale such as the volume, capacity, and the capability.

There are several advantages through the flexible manufacturing system. First of all, the productivity will increase due to the automation. Besides that, the time of preparation for new products will also shorten due to the flexibility. Furthermore, due to the automation, the labour cost can be also saved too. In addition, the quality of products will also improve. Therefore, it seems that the Flexibility Manufacturing System (FMS) has brought a lot of advantages and will be widely use to in the future.