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Today manufacturing industries have become more competitive and to survive, industries should be capable of accommodating the sudden market change. The conventional manufacturing systems like Dedicated Manufacturing Lines (DMLs) can produce high volume of product but difficult to cater to varying product types. On the other hand, Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) is capable of handling product variety but not suited for mass production, The Reconfigurable Manufacturing System (RMS) gives the advantage of both the system, as it has the capability to adjust to both high volume requirement and product variety, and it able to upgrade to new process technology with minimal effort. In this work the reconfiguration is carried out in machine and system level. At machine level, a new inspection machine is proposed which can be used for multiple products with minimal adjustments and a special drilling and bore tool is suggested to reduce the cycle time and ramp up time when product changes.

Considerable weight of an automobile is constituted by the engine and there is scope for improvement in fuel efficiency and emission control through optimization of weight in the engine. In this work, AlSi10Mg alloy produced by the direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) is suggested for engine application which is a lightweight aluminum alloy. Mechanical properties like tensile strength, compressive strength, and hardness of both cast and DMLS manufactured alloy are compared followed by analysis of SEM images of tensile test fractured surfaces. Reciprocating wear test is carried out for one lakh cycles at 125°C temperature with SAE 40 grade oil as lubricant. Co-efficient of friction (COF), wear rate of the cast and DMLS manufactured samples are compared. Wear patterns are analyzed using SEM images of the wear tracks.