AGILITY THROUGH INFORMATION SHARING - RESULTS ACHIEVED IN A PRODUCTION SETTING

As organizations seek to improve their competitive position by respond ing effectively to the increasing rate of change in the market place, the need for agile enterprises and agile manufacturing has came to the forefront. In this paper we examine the essential role that informati on sharing plays in enabling the agile manufacturing of complex produc ts. The principle goal of an agile manufacturing interlace is to provi de the information sharing infrastructure necessary to enable the form ation of virtual organizations and to provide them with the robust DFx mechanisms they need in order to develop high quality products in a t imely, cost effective manner. Results achieved from the implementation of an agile manufacturing interface in a production environment are h ighlighted. These results include a 10x reduction in the cycle-time re quired to go from design to manufacturing set-up, and a reduction in t he rework for complex Printed Circuit Assemblies of up to 80%.