Investigating the potential in reconfigurable manufacturing: A case-study from Danish industry

Abstract

In today’s global manufacturing environment, manufactures must respond to the challenges of quickly adopting new technologies and provide an increasing number of product varieties, while continuously increasing cost-efficiency. Reconfigurable manufacturing systems meet these challenges through rapid and efficient changes in functionality and capacity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a practical approach for evaluating the potential of reconfigurability in manufacturing companies, through a case-study in Danish industry. In this approach, historical production data is analyzed and focus is explicitly on capacity savings, which makes it applicable for decision support in companies that are in a transition towards becoming reconfigurable.