Many software development companies have fundamentally changed the way they organize and run their development organizations in the course of the last decade. Lean and agile software development became more and more common. Lean focuses on continuous value generation based on a framework of principles known from manufacturing. But how do software developers actually implement these principles i...

In the situation of shortened product life cycles, modular product design enables organizations to adapt to unanticipated changes in their environments. This study extends modular systems theory to manufacturing process design and posits that: (i) firms can design their manufacturing processes for the same product into either an integrated or modularized structure, thereby being agile in dynami...

The ability to rapidly introduce new components for assembly is an important concept in agile manufacturing. An agile workcell should therefore minimize the amount of downtime spent on retooling the system whenever components are introduced. In order to reduce the changeover time, a means for automatically generating gripper designs based on part geometry would be highly desirable. Such gripper...

Intelligent, agile manufacturing relies on automated programming of digitally controlled processes. Currently, processes such as Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machining are difficult to automate because of highly restrictive controllers and poor software environments. It is also difficult to utilize sensors and process models for adaptive control, or to integrate machining processes wit...

This paper describes research that explored the issues likely to be encountered when an agile process is introduced into a traditional environment. The methodology used considers strategic, cultural, and process integration issues in the implementation of advanced technologies. The methodology is used to define upstream/downstream process integration issues and impact for the replacement of fix...

Executive Summary This document is a revision of the D1.1. IoT@Work/WP1/D1.1/1.1 delivered on November 30 th 2010 to take into accounts the reviewers' comments as reported in the 1 st Technical Review Report. Full details of the changes made are available at This document reports the first iteration of the activities envisaged in the IoT@Work WP1 " Plug&Work IoT Requirement Assessment and Archi...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This paper describes how an Enterprise infrastructure is supporting agility on two ARPA initiatives namely, RASSP (Rapid prototyping of Application Specific Signal Processors), and AM3 (Affordable Multi-Missile Manufacturing). The two programs involve several large enterprises linked electronically to form virtual enterprises and aiming to address the issues raised by the cons...

When individual teams in mechatronic organizations attempt to adopt agile software practices, these practices tend to only affect modules or sub-systems. The short iterations on team level do not lead to short lead-times in launching new or updated products since the overall R&D approach on an organization level is still governed by an overall stage gate or single cycle V-model. This paper iden...