Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS)
Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) play an essential role in modern manufacturing systems, and the flexible material handling system (FMHS) plays a strategic role in the implementation of flexible manufacturing systems.
The Apparel industry is a major manufacturing sector in Hongkong. The industry faced a steady decline during 2009 owing to the reasons of increased labor costs, and mass customization. To meet the ever-changing customer demand and to save costs and improve quality, apparel manufacturers started looking for innovative manufacturing strategies and new business practices where the top priority is an improvement in the material handling system(MHS).
The apparel industry generally uses fixed material handling systems (FMS). The most commonly used material handling systems (MHS). Flexible material handling systems also can increase the productivity of product production. The Asia-Pacific apparel market widely uses fixed material handling systems like Eton Systems. The flexible material handling systems are expensive to implement. The flexible material handling systems bring many tangible and tangible benefits. The present article in the discussion analyzes the economic feasibility of flexible material handling systems.
To analyze the economic feasibility Net Present Value, payback period, Return on Investment, Internal rate of return techniques are used. A two-stage analysis is done. In the first stage, the life-cycle costs and the reconfiguration benefits. In the second stage, the economic value analysis is conducted.
The incremental costs are estimated using the component-based and modified activity-based cost-estimation.