Positioning sustainable automation in production of customized products

• Many manufacturing companies are being challenged by the trend that their products need to be produced in lower volumes and in customized forms. Having transferred this challenge into the production system, a natural consequence would be its collision with cost efficiency and high productivity. From a global perspective, competitiveness is also progressively becoming tied to the understanding of automation in production systems that can handle low product volumes with high variety among them. This is especially true for high wage countries that must find ways to become more competitive against low wage countries. This paper is an analytic effort and the first step to investigate key characteristics of production systems that utilize automation in production of customized products that run for short interval before being switched to the next one in line. The main arguments revolve around the idea that automated solutions need to be designed and implemented with flexibility and reconfigurability in mind to assure changing from one product variant to another would not disturb the entire production system. It is anticipated that these arguments would further advocate and empower the topic of sustainable automation within manufacturing companies and consequently, pave the way for increasing competitiveness at global scale.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik -- Produktionsteknik, arbetsvetenskap och ergonomi (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering -- Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Automation

Customization

High mix

Low volume

Sustainability

Competition

Manufacture

Wages

Cost-efficiency

Customisation

Customized products

Global perspective

High productivity

Manufacturing companies

Natural consequences

Production system

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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