Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore theoretical and practical challenges to achieve reconfigurable production system designs. Design/methodology/approach – Presented results are based on a multiple-case study involving two industrial companies and in total four production system design projects in which considerations of reconfigurability were studied. Additionally, literature related to reconfigurability and production system design was reviewed.

Findings – For more than a decade foresight reports have pointed out the need for responsiveness to change through reconfigurability in production system design. In order to achieve reconfigurable production systems, three challenges were identified: to use a structured design methodology, to gain knowledge in reconfigurability and its characteristics, and to include the reconfigurability knowledge in a structured design methodology. Still there is no comprehensive support available for reconfigurability in the production system design process.Research limitations/implications – Limitations are mostly related to the chosen methodology approach, and additional empirical studies to establish generic results are required. Practical implications – By combining knowledge from the production system design field with the reconfigurable manufacturing system field a potential of meeting identified challenges is pointed out. Originality/value – This paper adds to current knowledge by pointing out three main challenges to achieving reconfigurable production systems. The paper also contributes with ideas on how to respond to these challenges.

An industrial need is to develop and operate changeable manufacturing systems that easily can be changed according to customer requirements, production volumes, and new product generations. Such a manufacturing system needs to be developed with the manufacturing footprint in mind, comprising solutions at a conceptual and technical level that can be standardized and duplicated for new geographical locations. This demands the mindset and the incentives of the manufacturing industry to define and implement a life cycle approach when designing, thinking in system generations and recycling of solutions. It requires an integrated development process of the product and the manufacturing system with conscious planning of a ‘manufacturing systems portfolio’ that corresponds to the product portfolio. These are issues addressed in this paper with the objective to investigate available methods or tools for manufacturing system design, how they correspond to the product portfolio, and how they support life cycle perspective.

Production systems must be easy to change in different configurations in order to meet the demands of e.g. changing product volumes and product types. In order to meet the demands efficient support for design of reconfigurable production systems that is easy to apply in an industrial setting is needed. The problem is to get an understanding of how the production system design process can capture and support the design of reconfigurable production systems with technology, organization, and personnel under consideration. The objective of this paper is to describe and define reconfigurability and discuss how reconfigurability characteristics better can be considered in the production system design process. A literature review is made in order to describe the RMS design research and what is characterizing reconfigurability. A case study has also been carried out in order to analyze how the reconfigurability characteristics were considered in a production system design process. The case study motivate a structured and systematic way to consider reconfigurability in the production system design process. A tentative structure of a support to concider reconfigurability in the production system design process is presented.

It is increasingly important to locate manufacturing activities close to the most relevant competence or the most interesting market. The possibility to easily and quickly move manufacturing capacity is thus becoming more important. Hence, the demand for mobile manufacturing has increased and requires solutions for a quick, rational, and economical reconfiguration of the production system. Within the research project Factory-in-a-Box, the concept of mobile manufacturing has been investigated through the development and implementation of five operative demonstrators. This paper will analyze the concept of mobile manufacturing by presenting the results from the Factory-in-a-Box research project and its demonstrator development. The objective is to clarify when mobile manufacturing capacity can be a proper solution to use as well as to discuss future possible industrial manufacturing applications. The results show that there is a large range of applications for the concept of mobile manufacturing and that two dimensions – the geographical distance and the organizational distance – can be used to classify the mobility within manufacturing systems.