The concept of mobile manufacturing

It is increasingly important to locate manufacturing activities close to the most relevant competence or the most interesting market. The possibility to easily and quickly move manufacturing capacity is thus becoming more important. Hence, the demand for mobile manufacturing has increased and requires solutions for a quick, rational, and economical reconfiguration of the production system. Within the research project Factory-in-a-Box, the concept of mobile manufacturing has been investigated through the development and implementation of five operative demonstrators. This paper will analyze the concept of mobile manufacturing by presenting the results from the Factory-in-a-Box research project and its demonstrator development. The objective is to clarify when mobile manufacturing capacity can be a proper solution to use as well as to discuss future possible industrial manufacturing applications. The results show that there is a large range of applications for the concept of mobile manufacturing and that two dimensions - the geographical distance and the organizational distance - can be used to classify the mobility within manufacturing systems