Environmental Engineering Reference
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As trends in the automotive market changed, customers were no longer sat-
isfied by standard cars, but required customization (Brennan and Norrie 2003).
Davis was the first to introduce the concept of mass customization, which tries
to combine the low unit cost of mass-produced items with flexibility required
to produce customized by individual customers through computerized control of
production facilities.
2
FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING
As flexibility was commonly accepted as one of the primary nonfunctional
requirement for new manufacturing systems, research and development initia-
tives naturally concentrated on means and technologies to cope with the new
demands.
The notion of a
flexible manufacturing system
(FMS) was born when
Williamson in the 1960s presented his System24, a flexible machine that could
operate 24 hours without human intervention (Williamson 1967).
Computerized control and robotics were promising tools of the framework
for automation, which could increase flexibility. Obviously, not all products or
systems would benefit from or require increased flexibility, but FMS was intended
to close the gap between dedicated manufacturing hardware and customization,
as outlined by Swamidass (1998) in Figure 3.1.
FMS has the advantages of zero or low switching times, and hence is superior
to programmable systems. Despite that, however, FMS has had only limited
success in manufacturing setups.
Dedicated
systems
Flexible
systems
Programmable
systems
Independent
tools & methods
1 or 2
Low
8
100
800
High
Medium
Variety of Parts to Be Produced by the process/System
Figure 3.1
Manufacturing flexibility spectrum (adopted from Brennan and Norrie 2003)
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