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The bottom-up concept of turbulence monitoring leading to periodic re-invention to develop second order flexibility at local or cell level should be integrated into manufacturing system design. Such a framework concerns the process of change and the people who monitor, re-invent and operate new processes. For it to be effective, a major rethinking in how people visualize change is needed. Such a new culture, which thrives on uncertainty, can be achieved through training and education, along with the proper tools and techniques.

An alternative method of developing a manufacturing system design suitable for 'brown-field site' is built on three performance measures. The first is product market analysis based on the conventional top-down strategy of determining the market needs and creating a manufacturing design that addresses these needs. The second factor is the unexpected disruptions that must be considered by creating a flexible system that can adapt to new changes such as higher volumes or new product. The third is efficient use of time in both production and management to ensure faster product delivery.

Byline: Jay Jina, Arindam K. Bhattacharya, Andrew D. Walton Business philosophies such as continuous improvement and TQM have been in existence for some time now and embody a wealth of literature. The principles of Cellular Manufacturing together with various examples of its application and benefits are also well documented. The application of TQM to cellular environments is also well established: the deployment of pertinent measures, making visible performance information, and team-working being but a few of the examples. Whilst these approaches have enabled manufacturing strategies to be developed and appropriate systems to be implemented, adverse influences such as greater turbulence in the external environment have been at play. Increased competition combined with customer demand for quality, speed, product performance and lower costs are putting an ever greater burden on manufacturing. Not only do products need to be launched faster than ever, but manufacturing needs to be flexible in rapidly retuning its facilities. The move to cellular manufacturing, TQM or CIM or other techniques alone is thus no longer enough. Instead, the challenge is increasingly one of compressing the time it takes to continually 're-invent' the manufacturing system in order to meet the prevailing demands of the market place. The factors that cause manufacturing systems to behave suboptimally are discussed. Particular reference is made to market triggered turbulence as exhibited by mix and volume changes and to internally triggered turbulence such as design change. We show how these factors impact on the critical competitive dimension of time and by using case examples, we develop a framework for 'continual re-invention' of manufacturing systems so as to harness their full capabilities. By clearly distinguishing the processes which enable re-invention from the core manufacturing processes, we consider some issues critical to success: organization structures, skills profiles and the role of people.

Rheometers characterise the behaviour of foods and help dairies achieve reproducibility. Many foodstuffs are concentrated dispersions of solid particles in a liquid medium or liquid droplets in a liquid medium. [...]