Concepts, methods and tools for individualized production

Abstract

The main objective of the paper is to give an overview of prerequisites and enablers for individualized production from the perspective of flexible, agile and sustainable production of customized and personalized products. Increasing volatility in the global and local markets, shortening innovation and product life cycles, as well as a tremendously increasing number of variants, call for production facilities and networks and operations management which comply with these changing demands. The paper presents a set of developed concepts, methods and tools based on the recognized needs of manufacturing companies. The observed manufacturing domain is characterized with highly customized and personalized products produced in competitively in a high-cost country with short delivery times and high quality requirements. Micro and desktop factories can be seen as one type of solution to point-of-need manufacturing of customized and personalized products, such as hand-held consumer electronics or medical implants. The LeanMES concept and associated solution blocks aim for more efficient operation via digital tools. The Competitive Sustainable Manufacturing Hotel (CSM-Hotel) concept of a platform targeted for SMEs collaborating under same factory roof or in the same area. The A-NET vision offers a new holistic framework for industrial supply networks to manage development more agilely and for deeper strategic cooperation.