Designing modular manufacturing systems using mass customisation theories and methods

Abstract

Today, manufacturing systems are developed as engineered to order (ETO) solutions tailored to produce a specific product or a limited product mix. However, such dedicated systems are not consistent with the current market demands for rapid product changes, high product variety, and customisation. In response, modular manufacturing systems (MMS) are evolving, which are aimed to possess the required responsiveness and to be the manufacturing paradigm of mass customisation (MC). Hereby, MMS brings the development process of manufacturing systems against configured to order (CTO). Up to now, research in MMS has primarily focused on potential benefits, basic principles, and enabling technologies, while the approaches of actually designing and creating modular architectures have received less attention. A potential to fill these gaps by applying MC theories and methods is identified based on the commonalities in the basic modular approaches of MC and MMS. This paper analyses this potential and evaluates it through three conducted cases within the domain of industrial automation and robotics. Based on the results, the paper discusses the prospective to form an MMS design framework by utilising selected MC theories and methods.