Many firms adopt or consider flexible manufacturing technologies because these firms see FMS as a means for increasing productivity, profitability, quality and a means of maintaining a competetive edge in market place. Unfortunately, it is said that the traditional engineering economy approaches to the financial justification of advanced manufacturing technologies such as FMS discourage their adoption.
This justification methodology to include FMS benefits consists of two sequential stages, as proposed by some authors. The first stage is the tactical justification and the second the final and strategic justification. In the tactical justification stage, a measure of tactical benefits of implementing FMS projects is developed and the tactical justification methodology incorporating these benefits which can be brought out by system simulation is proposed. In the strategic justification stage, scoring method whose input data can be obtained by delphi method is used. Lastly, the justification procedure is shown in a hypothetical case. Particularly, in the tactical stage, tactical benefits are brought out by system simulation for a hypothetical manufacturing systems.
