MANUFACTURING COMPETITION THROUGH THE FACTORY IN A BOX CONCEPT

Today’s business environment is dominated by change and global competition is diminishing defined markets. Manufacturing success and survival are becoming more difficult to sustain and it is recognized that low cost and high quality alone are not enough to sustain firm’s competitive position in market place. Market uncertainty and frequent introductions of new products has created a growing need for responsive manufacturing systems. Thus, there is a growing demand for well-formulated manufacturing strategies which provide necessary support for developing and sustaining relevant order-winners and qualifiers, which enable rapid product realization as well as flexibility and reconfigurability within operations. The objective of this paper is to analyze and investigate flexible and reconfigurable production systems from a manufacturing strategy point of view. An ongoing research project in Sweden called Factory-in-a-Box will be presented which is one initiative in this area