Global competition in the manufacturing industry is characterized by ever shorter product life cycles, increasing complexity and a turbulent environment. High product quality, continuously improved processes as well as changeable organizational structures constitute central success factors for manufacturing companies. With the rise of the internet of things and Industrie 4.0, the increasing use...

Worldwide competition among manufacturing enterprises has acted as a driving force for the design, development and utilization of manufacturing systems with an increased degree of agility. In these regards, Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMS) are considered an intelligent systems paradigm to meet requirements for agile manufacturing systems. Despite all advantages of HMS, design and implementat...

The research area " Virtual Manufacturing (VM) " is the use of information technology and computer simulation to model real world manufacturing processes for the purpose of analysing and understanding them. As automation technologies such as CAD/CAM have substantially shortened the time required to design products, Virtual Manufacturing will have a similar effect on the manufacturing phase than...

Due to the current fast-paced business environment, new approaches product development (PD) have been requested. In that matter, agile approach has gained interest among researchers and practitioners. Based on its positive results in software industry, it started be adopted manufacturing industry. Nevertheless, there are factors companies must consider while adopting approach, is a lack of in-d...

The supply chain of a manufacturing enterprise is a world-wide network of suppliers, factories, warehouses, distribution centres and retailers through which raw materials are acquired, transformed and delivered to customers. Supply chain management is the strategic, tactical and operational level decision making that optimizes supply chain performance. The strategic level defines the supply cha...

Agile Manufacturing (AM) is a manufacturing paradigm that focuses on smaller scale, modular production facilities, and agile operations capable of dealing with turbulent and changing environments. From several enablers of AM, Virtual Enterprise (VE) and Information Technology (IT) were chosen. This empirical study explored the impact of the alignment between VE and IT on business performance in...

Double sampling (DS) X-control charts are designed to allow quick detection of a small shift of process mean and provides a quick response in an agile manufacturing environment. However, the DS X-control charts assume that the process standard deviation remains unchanged throughout the entire course of the statistical process control. Therefore, a complementary DS chart that can be used to moni...

To compete effectively in the global marketplace of the twenty-first century, manufacturing companies are trying to maintain a high level of flexibility and responsiveness to achieve agility and to remain competitive. Manufacturers are under tremendous pressure to improve productivity and quality while reducing costs. The new competition is in terms of reduced cost, improved quality products wi...