Adaptable design-towards smart one-of-a-kind product development

Abstract

The smart factories that are already beginning to appear employ a completely new approach to product creation. Smart products are uniquely identifiable, know their current status and alternative routes to achieving their target state. The embedded manufacturing systems are vertically networked with business processes and horizontally connected to disperse value networks that can be managed in real time. Smart factories allow individual customer requirements to be met and mean that even one-off items can be manufactured profitably. In smart industry, dynamic business and engineering processes enable last-minute changes to design and production and deliver the ability to respond flexibly to disruptions and failures on behalf of suppliers. The paper presents a case study of agility enhancement of one-of-a-kind industrial environment. It defines how changeability integrates with robust and concurrent design strategies, and how the principles of adaptability, flexibility and modularity can be applied to improve the operations of a highly individualized product development business. Successful managing of ‘never-ending’ engineering changes seems to be the most important aspect in this field. Accordingly, introducing changeability to highly individualized production environment is mostly about enhancing robustness of new product development process, which leads into minimization of rework activities, reinforced reputation on the market and overall excellence of a company. Presented work aims at delivering a generalized conceptual framework that demonstrates how companies in such specific environment can improve smartness and profitability through the utilization of changeability concepts. The presented case study offers valuable insights into how to implement this in practice. (Less)