Building Flexible Manufacturing Systems for the Changing Industrial Landscape

Abstract

The industrial environment has reached a phase of continuous instability and fast-paced changes. Changing customer needs, shorter product life cycles, geopolitical instabilities, and increasing unpredictability in the supply chain have led to realization of inefficiencies in traditional manufacturing processes designed to be highly stable. The need for more adaptive processes that would allow rapid response to the changing needs of the production, demand, and operation processes led to the development of flexible manufacturing systems.