Reconfigurable manufacturing systems from an optimisation perspective: a focused review of literature

The concept of reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMSs) is a current subject that has attracted intensive research. This latter covers the entire RMS life cycle, from the design to the exploitation phase, and includes several important problems requiring the use of optimisation. The objective of this paper is to survey research publications related to RMS optimisation problems and their solution methods. For this, the types of RMS and their components are described. Subsequently, relevant objective functions and performance indicators of RMS are presented. In addition, an overview of the most used solution approaches and a classification of optimisation problems are proposed. Finally, a detailed analysis, our conclusions, and suggestions for future research are provided.