In recent years, a large number of approaches to developing distributed manufacturing systems has been proposed. One of the principle reasons for these developments has been to enhance the reconfigurability of a manufacturing system; allowing it to readily adapt to changes over time. However, to date reconfigurability assessment has been limited, and hence the efficacy of the design approaches remains inconclusive. Recently, the �Design Structure Matrix� has been proposed as a tool for assessing the modularity of elements of a distributed manufacturing system and thereby providing an indirect indication of �reconfiguration ease�[16]. Additionally, an approach for its application has been proposed[14]. This paper develops this approach further into a systematic method for the reconfigurability measurement of manufacturing systems and illustrates its application on a robot assembly cell designed on distributed manufacturing system principles. This is achieved in three distinct phases: 1.) definition of system boundary 2.)decomposition of system functionality & components 3.)identification of component interfaces.