TABLE OF CONTENTS This part details some trends and characteristics required for future and advanced manufacturing systems. They briefly lead manufacturing organisations to be more flexible in management and labor practices as well as to be able to develop, produce and re-manufacture virtually defect-free products and services quickly in response to opportunities and needs of customers. They can be identified as follows:
Engineering. With the advent of computing and information technologies and telecommunications, design, manufacturing process and the use of products and services have evolved. Also, in the recent years, the impact of computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) has shifted from the traditional factory integration philosophy to a virtual factory management philosophy (Lee, 1996). These technological advances enable one to achieve a fast and highly collaborative environment based on i) multi-media software engineering tools and highly reliable communication systems for facilitation of distributed procedures of concurrent design and development of products and services, and ii) operations indistributed production systems.
Environment and ecology. Recycling involves the settling and reusing of materials. They can be provided from returned products (new, repaired, restored or rebuilt, etc) This implies introduction of a fashionable concept around environmentally conscious design. Compared with the well known approach called design for manufacturing it covers many more constraints since it means design...
