ABSTRACT
Modern manufacturing strategies demand shorter production cycles, greater adaptability and shorter set-up times. The impact of demand for choice in consumer products with continual updating of specifications requires manufacturing machinery to be revised and reconfigured at increasingly frequent intervals. In many cases, however, current machines are so difficult to modify
cost effectively that complete machine rebuild is necessary to accommodate product change. Increasing customer choice leads to a diversity of product variance with a resultant demand for very small batch sizes. For example, in the packaging industry there is demand for high quality cardboard boxes which must be manufactured to order (cut, colour printed and formed) in batches of less than 50, where traditionally only high volumes were considered viable.
