New business models and configuration approaches for focused-flexibility manufacturing systems

In the current competitive scenario, industrial companies experience frequent unexpected changes in production demand. To cope with them, they often opt for investments in manufacturing technologies which embed extra-flexibility that is rarely utilized and that, consequently, penalizes financial and operational performance. In this paper, new business models for focused-flexibility manufacturing systems are proposed to improve manufacturing performances in turbulent environments and to increase machine builders competitiveness though the offering of high value-added services. These innovative business models should be enabled by the adoption of new integrated methods for the joint production system-business model configuration. Starting from the available state of the art on production systems configuration, the paper illustrates research activities in progress to finalize the development of such methodological enablers for new flexibility-oriented business models. © 2012 Published.