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The unpredictable market scenario in the manufacturing industry demands the adoption of reconfigurability enablers. These enablers reduce the reconfiguration effort throughout the system life cycle and allow frequent reconfigurations of the manufacturing system. Despite the relevance of the subject, examples and concepts of reconfigurability enablers are fragmented in literature. Therefore, this study systematically reviews literature in order to: (i) outline the state of the art on reconfigurability enablers in automated, mixed and manual systems; and, (ii) provides classification frameworks for reconfigurability enablers for manufacturing systems, machines, robots, material handling systems, and operators. Additionally, new reconfigurability enablers related to Industry 4.0 are outlined, which connect systems and human resources with different roles and facilitate responsive adaptation of humans to changes. Directions for future research include extending the theory on reconfigurable manufacturing with fundamentals of human-centric automation and operationalising the proposed classification framework.

International audience; In the development and launch of new products to the market, manufacturing companies are continuously pressured to reduce time and cost to sustain competitiveness. In this regard, the effective and efficient development and ramp-up of manufacturing systems is a critical factor. However, while agile methods for increasing the speed of product design and development have received wide attention in both research and practice, manufacturing system development has in contrary been less explored and generally regarded as a less systematic or as an ad-hoc task. Therefore, this paper presents a multiple case-study from a large Danish manufacturing company with the aim of exploring challenges in three different manufacturing system development projects. The within-case and cross-case findings indicate that manufacturing system development indeed is a critical task, where many challenges regarding product to manufacturing system interface and internal interfaces in the manufacturing system architecture exists. Furthermore, findings indicate that lack of interface management leads to the redesign of new manufacturing systems, rather than reuse and reconfiguration. Thus, the case findings suggest a potential in increasing the use and reuse of existing manufacturing systems and explicitly designing platforms for reducing development cost and time.

Due to continuous focus on sustainability and circular economy, product take-back programs are becoming increasingly relevant and attractive. Thus, closed-loop manufacturing systems have to be designed and developed for disassembly, reprocessing of materials, re-assembly, and remanufacturing in a cost-efficient way. Compared to traditional manufacturing, this involves a higher need for changeability due to higher uncertainty, e.g. in terms of timing and quantity that the system needs to handle, uncertainty in quality and materials of received items, and in particular significant variety in returned items, the system should be designed to process. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to investigate how reconfigurability, as the enabler of changeability at manufacturing system level, can be utilised to aid challenges in closed-loop manufacturing systems for product take-back. Initially, insights from an industrial case are presented regarding challenges in establishing and operating closed-loop manufacturing systems for product take-back programs. Secondly, different closed-loop manufacturing concepts applying the principles of reconfigurability are proposed and evaluated in terms of cost and robustness towards the inherent uncertainties in supplied end-of-use items. The results show significant potential of utilising a modular and platform-based approach towards meeting supply uncertainties through reconfiguration, which allows for a more efficient setup for product take-back.

Many Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are facing challenges in their manufacturing systems due to rapidly evolving and unpredictable customer requirements. To meet these challenges ensuring both responsiveness and cost-efficiency, SMEs may increase changeability by embedding appropriate levels of flexibility and reconfigurability in the design of manufacturing systems. In addition, the rapid diffusion of digital and smart technologies due to Industry 4.0, provides SMEs with new opportunities to increase changeability. This chapter details how flexibility and reconfigurability could be used to meet different change drivers; moreover, the related benefits are described and associated to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Finally, three industrial examples from SMEs are provided. The three cases highlight that changeability can indeed create benefits in SMEs, especially for adjusting manufacturing towards frequent variants changes, mix changes, volume changes, and new product introductions.