Implementation of Reconfigurable Manufacturing in the Italian Context: State-of-the-Art and Trends

The dynamic market demand, the short product life cycles, the need for flexibility and the increased variety of customized products force industrial companies to explore the idea of moving towards new classes of manufacturing paradigms. Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMSs) meet such current challenges through the rapid change of their physical and logical structures in response to the market requirements. However, the introduction of such systems requires high initial investments that provide returns in the mid/long-term affecting the manufacturing performances during the ramp-up and the production periods. Current literature provides few contributions on the assessment of RMS potential, especially for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). This paper revises the state-of-the-art and trends about the implementation of reconfigurable manufacturing looking at the Italian context, characterized by 88% of SMEs with low/mid-volume manufacturing and high product variety. Evidences show that the introduction of reconfigurable manufacturing positively affects SMEs production performances especially at the work-station level and it effectively addresses the increased product variety as well as the introduction of new products. Finally, the “learning factory” concept is explored as solution to link Academia and Industry to spread the culture of innovation and advanced manufacturing to students, large enterprises and SMEs for research, training and education in manufacturing. Relevant existing “learning factories” for reconfigurability, production and factory layout planning are reviewed and their value in spreading the culture of manufacturing innovation is highlighted.