An Approach for Integrated Design of Flexible Production Systems

The paper presents a holistic methodological approach for designing flexible production systems, integrating the management of the production resources, operations planning, internal logistics and quality. The proposed methodology relies on lean principles and encompasses a series of stages and tools that may be used to design and to assess the robustness of the production system for tackling small series and frequent changes in the productive processes due to customized production. This approach has been applied to the redesign of the production system of a Portuguese machinery manufacturing industrial company. Results show that it effectively led to a new flexible production system and a new industrial layout capable of responding to diverse future scenarios of products demand.