Agile product development process transformation to support advanced one-of-a-kind manufacturing

Abstract

Increased competition in the global market has forced companies to diversify their product ranges to meet the customers’ changing needs and adopt product development strategies for mass customization or even one-of-a-kind production, which inevitably requires designing modular products. Product modularity is achieved via platform-based systems, in which various combinations of different modules are assembled within a common platform. The smart factories that are already beginning to appear to employ a completely new approach to product creation. In smart industry, dynamic business and engineering processes enable last-minute changes to design and production, delivering the ability to respond flexibly to disruptions and failures on behalf of suppliers. This paper presents a case study of product development and design process renovation according to agile and lean principles in one-of-a-kind industrial environments. It defines how changeability integrates with robust, concurrent and smart design strategies. Introduction of agility to highly individualized production environments is mostly about enhancing the robustness of new product development processes. Product development and manufacturing processes are interconnected therefore they need to be re-engineered together. The presented work aims to deliver a generalized conceptual framework that demonstrates how companies in such specific environments can improve smartness and profitability through the utilization of agility concepts.