Enabling Competitive Design of Next Generation Reconfigurable Manufacturing Enterprises

The need for a new generation of more responsive manufacturing enterprises (MEs) has emerged where trading uncertainties have triggered complex causal impacts that necessitate faster, better and cheaper production. In today’s hostile market driven world, most MEs need to be reconfigurable by deploying flexible resources that are flexibly bound together into systems via the use of suitable organisational structures. It follows that MEs can compete by deploying organisational structures that are more readily reconfigured than those of competitor MEs. The literature reports on alternative manufacturing philosophies that any given ME can adopt (such as Lean, Agile, Postponement and Economies of Scope & Scale) and managers and engineers responsible for MEs can reference these ideas so as to balance response, cost and quality trade offs throughout their enterprise. Therefore based upon a literature analysis, this paper describes key requirements of next generation reconfigurable MEs. Also a research framework is proposed to address common reconfiguration problems in MEs. The paper also provides an overview of findings when applying that framework in automotive, furniture, and bearings industries. Reflections, conclusions, and recommendation for future research are also included.