Abstract
Globalization has forced enterprises to adapt their products and services to remain competitive in the free market. Manufacture plays an important role in the competitive aspect; it is where an innovation in the production system could lead to business advantage. These innovations usually involve the key elements in manufacturing systems: machines, tools and resources administration. A reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) is one designed for rapid change in its structure and components, to quickly adjust its production capacity and functionality in response to sudden market or intrinsic system changes. However, reconfiguration alone is not enough since it will provide information to produce a certain item but it wont provide the components that will automate the machine tool for mass production. The process of automation of machine tools is known as retrofit, process being developed and researched in emergent economies. The current retrofit kits are expensive and are not tailor made, thus, they are not attractive for small and medium enterprises. This article describes a solution for fast reconfiguration of machine tools using the Knowledge Based-Engineering System methodology (KBES) that allows to obtain, structure and manage the knowledge generated in a determined engineering process, in this case, the reconfiguration process.
