Today’s  business  environment  is  dominated  by  change and  uncertainty,  and  success  within  manufacturing  is becoming  more  and  more  difficult  to  sustain.  Also,  many European  manufacturing  companies  experience  low availability  of  human  resources  and  recruitment  problems. One way to handle this challenge and improve a company’s efficiency  could  be  to  invest  in  automation  and  industrial robotics.  However,  robot  automation  investments  are  in many  cases  still  too  difficult  and  too  technically  advanced especially  for small and medium sized enterprises. There  is need  for automated systems with an acceptable  investment, high  efficiency,  high  adaptability,  and with  such  flexibility that  it may produce  several different products  and  adapt  to future product variants without large additional investments. Thus,  the  concepts  of  flexibility  and  reconfigurability  are becoming  increasingly  important  within  manufacturing systems and robotic work stations. The objective of  this paper  is  to  investigate  the need  for flexible  and  reconfigurable  industrial  robot  systems  and  to present  some  possible  solutions  for  how  the  concept  of mobile  industrial  robotics  can  be  applied  within  industry, and  specifically  at  small  and  medium  sized  enterprises (SMEs). A conceptual solution for a mobile  industrial robot will be presented and evaluated in terms of applicability for a manufacturing SME. The  result  of  this  evaluation  is  that the concept of mobile  industrial robotics may be an enabler for  SMEs  to  overcome  the  barrier  to  invest  in  industrial robotics. However,  several  technical  developments  have  to be  accomplished  to  open  up  the  market  for  this  type  of solutions, and the common attitude of the SME would have to  be  changed  to  become  more  receptive  to  this  type  of highly  technological  solution,  i.e.  the perceived complexity of the highly complex system has to be low.