With increased consumer demands for a wider variety of products In changeable, unpredicted quantities, manufacturing system responsiveness has become increasingly Important for Industry competitiveness.
In the field of manufacturing the responsiveness has become a new strategic goal for the enterprises alongside with quality and costs.
While market requirements demand that manufacturing systems increase their responsiveness, assembly fixtures remain limited in corresponding to the same demand.
However, a joint emphasis on performance dimensions relating to manufacturing efficiency and customer responsiveness emerges as problematic.
The turbulent environment of modern times breeds a need to ensure flexibility and responsiveness for manufacturing systems.
Due to this complexity, particularly in manufacturing, a lack of responsiveness in coping with demand for higher quality products, the drastic reduction in product lifecycles and the increasing need for product customization are being observed.
In a longer perspective, the results may provide the necessary theoretical foundation for accelerating the development and integration of design, manufacturing, and services to improve responsiveness of the overall design chain and its efficiency from both technical and economic perspective.
This imposes a number of profound and far-reaching demands on modern industrial manufacturing systems such as adaptability, agility, responsiveness, robustness, flexibility/reconfigurability, dynamic optimization, openness to new innovations, and, in some environments, continuously varying collaborations.
Finally, an important indicator may be the change in agriculture's responsiveness to the demands of industry and manufacturing.
As illustrated through industrial case studies, production engineering should integrate a rich body of interdisciplinary results together with contemporary information and communication technologies in order to facilitate cooperation and responsiveness that are vital in competitive, sustainable manufacturing.
