Design lessons for building agile manufacturing systems

This paper summarizes results of a five-year, multidisciplinary, university -industry collaborative effort investigating design issues in agile manufac turing. The focus of this project is specifically on light mechanical assem bly, with the demand that new assembly tasks be implementable quickly, econ omically, and effectively. Key to achieving these goals is the ease of equi pment and software reuse. Design choices for both hardware and software mus t strike a balance between the inflexibility of special-purpose designs and the impracticality of overly general designs; We review both our physical and software design choices and make recommendations for the design of agil e manufacturing systems.