A lifecycle approach to the flexibility assessment of manufacturing system designs

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In the value-driven era of Industry 5.0, adaptive, resilient, and flexible production systems are essential for addressing the needs of mass individualization, managing disruptions, and maintaining cost-effectiveness. While the need for assessing manufacturing flexibility has been debated for decades, in the context of long-term economic sustainability, making informed decisions is critical when upgrading or investing in manufacturing systems. This paper proposes a framework for evaluating the flexibility of manufacturing system designs generically, utilizing a lifecycle approach that considers the system’s sensitivity to change. It incorporates both the product and system lifecycles that manufacturing systems face and operate in, given today’s competitive and uncertain multi-product environment. Manufacturing systems may require anything from minor adjustments to significant investments throughout the system’s lifecycle. The ease and cost of implementing these changes are key indicators of flexibility. The methodology assesses variations in net operating and configuration costs across different multi-product market demand scenarios during a predefined period of time. A conceptual case study comparing a reconfigurable assembly system with a rigid assembly line demonstrates the framework’s effectiveness, highlighting its practicality as a comparative tool for selecting the more flexible manufacturing system designs.