Critical enablers of changeable and reconfigurable manufacturing and their industrial implementation

Abstract

Purpose During design of reconfigurable manufacturing systems, manufacturing companies need to select and implement the right enablers of reconfigurability in accordance with the specific requirements being present in the manufacturing setting. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate enablers of reconfigurability in terms of their importance in industry, current level of implementation in industry, and significant differences in their implementation and criticality across different manufacturing settings. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey is conducted, in order to provide generalizable empirical evidence across various industries and manufacturing types. Findings The findings indicate that the level of implementation of the reconfigurability enablers is rudimentary, while their criticality is perceived higher than the current level of implementation. Moreover, significant differences regarding implementation and criticality of mobility, scalability, and convertibility were found for companies with varying degrees of manual work, make-to-stock production, and varying production volume, industry type and organization size. Research limitations/implications Main limitations of the research cover the relatively small sample size and non-random sampling method applied, primarily limited to one country, which could be increased to further extent the findings reported in this paper. Practical implications The findings indicate that the importance and implementation of reconfigurability enablers is contingent on the manufacturing setting. Thus, the research presented in this paper provides valuable knowledge in regard to aiding a paradigm shift in industry and help companies design manufacturing systems with the right reconfigurability enablers. Originality/value This paper expands research on manufacturing system design for changeability and reconfigurability, by explicitly considering these as capabilities that can be enabled in various ways for various purposes in different manufacturing contexts.

The Italian Flagship Project: Factories of the Future

“…Complex and variable market demands combined with the technological evolution of products and processes lead to the need of factories that are able to react and evolve themselves by exploiting flexibility [28], reconfigurability [29], changeability [30][31][32], and scalability [33] to stay competitive in dynamic production contexts [34].…”

Reconfigurable Manufacturing: A Classification of Elements Enabling Convertibility and Scalability

“…At SL, the universality of workstations may allow accomplishing incremental changes, for example the possibility to share and or swap functional units among stations. [3], [18], [20]. Moreover, features of the material handling system, such as the level of automation of its devices and the possible movements of these systems, impact on the incrementality of changes too [20].…”

“…In addition, emerging intelligent manufacturing technologies promise to enable and enhance reconfigurability [1], [2]. However, despite these promising potentials, the wide implementation of manufacturing solutions realizing the reconfigurability char-acteristics still appears rather limited in industry [2], [3]. It is widely recognized that the core characteristics of reconfigurability are: modularity, integrability, diagnosabil-ity, scalability, convertibility and customization.…”

“…In addressing this research question, "elements" enabling scalability and converti-bility are defined as concrete constituents of such characteristics. Moreover, focus is limited to the factory and lower manufacturing levels, where previous research on manufacturing "elements", "enablers" or "assessment criteria" (enabling specific characteristics of reconfigurability and/or enabling reconfigurability as a capability in itself [3], [18]- [20]) has been considered. For this purpose, criteria have been defined for analyzing previous research and ensure coverage of reconfigurability as a multi-dimensional capability and in turn create a basis for future research based on case studies.…”

“…Web of Science and Scopus, as well as through additional snow-ball search processes. Papers referring to: (i) "changeability", often used to denote to the capability of manufacturing sys-tems to adapt to any changes independently on the manufacturing level of reference [4], [26]; (ii) "flexibility", often used at workstation and system levels [6]; and (iii) "transformability" often used at factory level [3], [4] have been reviewed as well.…”