Disrupting industrial manufacturing
Having focused on semiconductor manufacturing, we will now look into areas and case studies in industrial manufacturing. Here, disruptions refer to innovations and new paradigms being introduced to manufacturing. In the context of this book, this will refer to any manufacturing activity that deals with machining, or assembly of products.
Flexible manufacturing
Manufacturing plants can be characterized into broad categories, based on the volume they can produce and the variety of parts they manufacture. These can be categorized into the following:
- Low mix/high volume: In this case, the plant is turning out a few part varieties at high volume. This would, for example, be the case for dedicated assembly lines.
- High mix/low volume: In this case, the plant has relatively small production capacity but can manufacture a large variety of parts. Manufacturers that make custom parts in low volume are an example of this.
- Low mix/low volume...
