Risk analysis in manufacturing footprint decisions

A key aspect in the manufacturing footprint analysis is the risk and sensitivity analysis of critical parameters. In order to contribute to efficient industrial methods and tools for making well-founded strategic decisions regarding manufacturing footprint this paper aims to describe the main risks that need to be considered while locating manufacturing activities, and what risk mitigation techniques and strategies that are proper in order to deal with these risks. It is also proposed how the risk analysis should be included in the manufacturing location decision process

Production localization factors: an industrial and literature based review

Decision are commonly based on the available or easily accessible information; this is also true for more complex assessments like production localization. Where to locate production is often a key strategic decisions that has great impact on a company’s profitability for a long time; insufficient business intelligence may therefore have grave consequences. Six production localization factor studies have been assessed to see if they are focusing on the same issues and if there are any gaps. A new approach for structuring localization factors and the localization process is then presented and assessed with regards to some previously identified critical issues

Reconfigurable Manufacturing – An Enabler for a Production System Portfolio Approach

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how the development of a strategically integrated product and production system portfolio could be enabled by the concept of reconfigurable manufacturing. In previous research, several critical challenges related to developing production system portfolios have been identified, but it has not been investigated how developing a reconfigurable manufacturing concept could aid some of these. Therefore, through a multiple case study, these critical challenges have been investigated in two companies that have recently developed reconfigurable manufacturing concepts for multiple variants and generations of products. The findings reveal that the companies need to deal with several challenges in order to enable a functioning RMS. By running the project separately from the NPD project and to include several product types and production sites the company overcome several challenges

Supporting the Design of Reconfigurable Production Systems

To compete, manufacturing companies need production systems that quickly can respond to changes. To handle change drivers such as volume variations or new product variants, reconfigurability is advocated as a competitive means. This implies an ability to add, remove, and/or rearrange the structure of the production system to be ready for future changes. Still, it is not clear how the production system design process can capture and support the design of reconfigurable production systems. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to increase the knowledge of how to support the design of reconfigurable production systems. Reconfigurability could be defined by a number of reconfigurability characteristics including convertibility, scalability, automatibility, mobility, modularity, integrability, and diagnosability. In eight case studies, reconfigurability characteristics in production system design were studied in order to investigate reconfigurability needs, knowledge, and practice in manufacturing companies. In three of the case studies reconfigurable production systems were studied to identify the links between change drivers and reconfigurability characteristics. In the remaining five case studies, reconfigurability in the production system design processes was addressed in terms of needs, prerequisites, and consideration. Based on the literature review and the case studies, support for reconfigurable production system design is suggested including two parts. The first part comprises support for analyzing the need for reconfigurability. Based on relevant change drivers the need for reconfigurability must be identified to enable selection of right type and degree of reconfigurability for each specific case of application. A comprehensive view of the reconfigurability characteristics is presented and links between change drivers and reconfigurability characteristics are described. The characteristics are divided into critical characteristics, that lead to a capacity or functionality change of the production system, and supporting characteristics, that reduce system reconfiguration time but do not necessarily lead to a modification of functionality or capacity of the production system. The second part provides support in how to consider reconfigurability in the production system design process. A holistic perspective is crucial to design reconfigurable production systems and therefore constituent parts of a production system are described. According to their character physical, logical, and human reconfiguration must be considered through the whole production system design process