Evaluation, optimization and simulation of the production of a Tesla turbine and Stirling motor in a reconfigurable manufacturing system

Emerging economies and new ways of doing business are changing the world in a dramatic manner, these changes suggest that new competitive advantages must be created within companies to be able to develop customized products and cost effective manufacturing systems. Reconfigurability has been an issue in computing and robotics for many years. In general, reconfigurability is the ability to repeatedly change and rearrange the components of a system in a cost-effective way. In this thesis two products are manufactured in a Reconfigurable Manufacturing System (RMS) that has the ability to rearrange the conveyor belts because these were manufactured as modules. This research shows the evaluation and improvement of production process of a Tesla turbine and the creation of the production process of a Stirling motor in a Reconfigurable manufacturing system. Also, the two production processes were simulated in “Plant Simulation”. The methodology used to reach the objectives is based in the development of three main stages. The first stage “Obtaining of operations times” has the purpose of get the times of each operation involved in the production process. The second stage “Definition of the Process Flow” has the purpose of define the number of pallets, their contents and their flows in the manufacturing cell. Finally, the stage “Calculation of production parameters” has the purpose of calculate cycle times, production rates, utilizations can compare the improvement in relation with old production process or if the product has never been manufactured to can obtain good results and compare them in the future with others production process. For the Tesla turbine the reduction of the cycle time in percentage was 13.21%, therefore there was an increase in the production rate in 13.21%. Also, every station increased its utilization with the new production process. The production process of a Stirling motor was created using the same configuration that was used with the Tesla turbine and the cycle time obtained was 37 minutes and 45 seconds approximately.