The aim of the research project was to identify ways to maximise the flexibility of the plant by varying equipment utilization, while guaranteeing a certain level of profit. A case study was conducted at a company that makes various types of food additives, which are produced in a multi-product multipurpose batch plant. At the time of the research, market demand was exceeding the company's prod...

Cellular manufacturing emerged as a production strategy capable of solving the certain problems of complexity and long manufacturing lead times in batch production. The fundamental problem in cellular manufacturing is the formation of product families and machine cells. This paper presents a new approach for obtaining machine cells and product families. The approach combines a local search heur...

This provocation paper provides an overview of the underlying optimisation problem in the emerging field of Digital Manufacturing. Initially, this paper discusses how the notion of “Digital Manufacturing” is transforming from a term describing a suite of software tools for the integration of production and design functions towards a more general concept incorporating computerised manufacturing ...

New manufacturing methods involving direct fabrication processes seem ideal for mass customization or “just-in-time” production. The use of tool-less means of production ensures reduced lead-time and lower cost. Besides, they provide flexibility in design and fabrication, which are essential for small lot sizes. However, part quality and production reliability are challenges that must be met. W...

A so far unused system inherent manufacturing flexibility potential, which is named allocation flexibility, is presented in order to achieve a better fulfilment of logistic targets using autonomous control. The discovery of this new type of manufacturing flexibility demanded for an assessment of already described types of manufacturing flexibility and for development of a new framework of manuf...

Manufacturing innovations are technologies and activities that improve and change the level of capacity, performance and quality in manufacturing permanently or over time. This policy brief explores the role of manufacturing innovations in different Nordic contexts, their link with production relocation decisions and performance implications. Manufacturing innovations are analyzed in terms of f...

An uncertain environment has forced manufacturing systems to have flexibility. Uncertainties involved with internal and external factors means that flexibility becomes an important competitive factor for the firms. However, the concept of manufacturing flexibility has not yet been clearly identified, understood and integrated. These problems have led to researchers and practitioners getting con...

In this paper a multi-objective nonlinear programming model of cellular manufacturing system is presented which minimize the intercell movements and maximize the sum of reliability of cells. We present a genetic approach for finding efficient solutions to the problem of cell formation for products having multiple routings. These methods find the non-dominated solutions and according to decision...

Manufacturing strategy is a plan for moving a company from where it is to where it wants to be. Determining the best manufacturing strategy is not easy because of the wide range of choices and constraints a company faces. Manufacturing strategy frameworks or models are helpful because they identify the objects that comprise manufacturing strategy and organize these objects into a structure that...