The Cobasa Architecture as an Answer to Shop Floor Agility

Shop floor agility is a central problem in current manufacturing companies. Internal and external constraints, such as growing number of product variants and volatile markets, are changing the way these companies operate by requiring continuous adaptations or reconfigurations of their shop floors. This need for continuous shop floor changes is so important that finding a solution to this problem would offer a competitive advantage to contemporary manufacturing companies. The central issue is, therefore, which techniques, methods, and tools are appropriate to address shop floors whose life cycles are no more static but show high level of dynamics. In other words, how to make the process of changing and adapting the shop floor fast, cost effective, and easy. The long history of industrial systems automation shows that the problem of developing and maintaining agile shop floors cannot be solved without an integrated view, which accommodate the different perspectives and actors involved in the various phases of the life cycle of these systems. Moreover, supporting methods and tools should be designed and developed to accommodate the continuous evolution of the manufacturing systems along their life cycle phases – a problem of shop floor reengineering. The design and development of a methodology to address shop floor reengineering is thus an important research issue aiming to improve shop floor agility, and, therefore, increasing the global competitiveness of contemporary manufacturing companies. Agility is a fundamental requirement for modern manufacturing companies in order to face challenges provoked by the globalisation, changes on environment and working conditions regulations, improved standards for quality, fast technological mutation, and changes of the production paradigms. The turbulent and continuous market changes have impacts at different levels, from company management to shop floor. Only companies that exhibit highly