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I
f you practice yoga, flexibility is
extremely important. Bending and
stretching helps people accomplish
difficult poses such as downward-
facing dog or the standing half-
moon.
Flexible thinking is equally important
in todays complex business world. In
fact, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants
GmbH (Munich,
Germany) recently
c o n d u c t e d a
study in which it
discovered that the
key to success in
a slow economy is
flexibility.
C o m p a n i e sthat react quicker
to changes in the
market are able to
stay solidly in the
black, says Thom-
as Ring, a partner
in Roland Bergers
operations strat-
egy competence
center. The best companies actually
act against the cycle, using their com-
petitors weaknesses to strengthen their
own position.In a rapidly changing environment,
the ability to shift from growth plan
to capacity cutting and back when
the market recovers is becoming a
competitive success factor, adds Ring.
Global competition drives the speed
of changed market requirements. The
ability to quickly adjust is critical to
leverage market cycles and sustain
earnings, even during downturns.
As markets increasingly become
less predictable, Ring says flexibility
will become even more critical to
manufacturers. Flexible assembly lines
allow companies to react quickly to
shifting customer demands and short
product life cycles. A flexible machine
can be easily changed to adapt to
new production processes or product
designs.
Typically, a flexible assembly
system consists of a standard platform
and a series of interchangeable process
and test modules that can be removed,
modified and replaced quickly and
easily. It allows for the future assembly
of similar, possibly unrelated or
currently undefined products.Unfortunately, machine builders,
systems integrators and their customers
often have different definitions and ideas
about flexibility. It means different
things to different customers in different
industries, says Jim Diederich, vice
president of marketing at Assembly and
Test Worldwide (Dayton, OH). There
are multiple definitions of the word,
even within the same companies.
Weve seen opinions about
flexibility differ from the people
writing up initial specs to the peoplesigning off on finished equipment,
Diederich points out. To avoid problems
and confusion, he urges manufacturing
engineers to ensure that everyone in
their plant shares the same goals and
objectives with flexible assembly lines.
Flexibility implies more than just
product, process, lot-size and routing
flexibilities, claims Frank Chen, Ph.D.,
director of the Center for Advanced
HowFlexible
IsYour Factory?Flexibility is more
important than ever.
ByAustin Weber
Senior Editor
30 ASSEMBLY/ March 2009 www.assemblymag.com
Flexible assembly lines allow companies to
react quickly to constantly shifting customer
demands and short product life cycles.
Photo courtesy Honda Motor Co.
ASSEMBLY Planbook
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www.assemblymag.com March 2009 / ASSEMBLY 31
Manufacturing and Lean Systems at
the University of Texas at San Antonio.
It is how a manufacturing system can
cope with rapid changes of customer
demands in both product styling and
quantities, and how easily the systemcan be reconfigured to have higher
automation or higher labor content.
Productivity cannot be gained via
implementing flexible manufacturing,
notes Chen, who has been studying
flexible manufacturing systems since
the 1980s. Rapid customer response
and shorter time to market are the real
incentives for implementing flexible
[assembly lines].
Mark Dinges, product marketing
manager for linear motion and assembly
technologies at Bosch Rexroth Corp.
(Buchanan, MI), agrees with Chen.
Manufacturers are constantly pressed
with supplying smaller and more
complex products, he points out.
However, the greatest pressure actually
comes from reducing time to market. As
product life cycles continue to shrink,
successful manufacturers must utilize a
flexible production system to get their
products to market faster and to stay
competitive.
The ultimate goal of flexible
manufacturing is to provide the right
product to the right customer at the righttime, adds Dinges. Lean thinking is
involved here, because supplying the
right product at the right time includes
the concept of manufacturing to
customer takt time, and the ability to
ramp up or scale back production to
meet the level of customer demand.
Flexible Champions
When it comes to building complex
products and meeting customer needs,
its impossible to overlook the auto
industry, which has been implementingvarious forms of flexible assembly lines
for the past decade. Today, automakers
must assemble a greater mix of vehicles
in a shrinking number of plants.
More types of vehicles are available
than ever and new products proliferate
every year to address diverse consumer
tastes. Indeed, there are more niche
segments, platforms and nameplates on
the market today than 20 years ago.
According to J.D. Power and
Associates (Westlake Village, CA),
more than 300 different models were
available in the United States in 2008
vs. 216 in 1993. Between 1985 and
2004, average annual sales per vehicle
nameplate dropped from 106,819
to 48,626. By 2010, that number is
expected to drop to 40,000.
The goal of flexible production isto balance capacity with demand to
meet market fluctuations, says John
Lucci, a partner at Oliver Wyman
Inc. (Troy, MI), a consulting firm that
conducts the annual Harbour Report on
manufacturing efficiency. Flexibility is
more important than ever, as witnessed
by the recent spike and drop in gas
prices. As multiple propulsion systems,
ranging from gas and hybrid to electric
and diesel, proliferate in the industry,
flexible assembly lines will become
even more essential to automakers andsuppliers.
In a flexible environment, vehicles
are put together the same way, with
shared components and standardized
assembly equipment. Multiple vehicle
segmentscars, sport-utility vehicles
(SUVs), minivans, pickup trucks and
crossover vehiclescan be built off
the same architecture. Variability in
body styles and sizes, chassis sizes,
interiors and other differences are
easily accommodated. That flexibility
translates into tremendous cost savings
and reduced downtime during product
changeover.
However, flexible assembly has been
easier said than done in the auto industry.
The Big Three have been talking about
their flexible factories for years. Indeed,
back in 2002, a senior executive atFord Motor Co. (Dearborn, MI) told
ASSEMBLY that achieving genuine
flexibility is vital to any future scenario.
And were committed to getting there in
the shortest possible time.
During the last seven years, Ford has
spent millions of dollars retooling its
assembly plants and body shops. But,
last year, when the market suddenly
shifted from large pickups and SUVs
to small cars, the automaker wasnt
flexible enough to immediately shift
production like some of its Japanesecompetitors.
Ford is currently investing $75
million to retool a truck plant in
Wayne, MI, for small-car production.
Its one of three Ford plants in North
America that are being converted to
build fuel-efficient cars. At the heart
of this manufacturing transformation
is a flexible operation, claims Joe
Hinrichs, group vice president of global
As markets become less predictable, flexibility will become more critical to manufacturers.
Photo courtesy Toyota Motor Corp.
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manufacturing and labor affairs
at Ford.
Despite numerous invest-
ments, American automakers
still lag behind their Japanese
competitors when it comes toflexible manufacturing. Japa-
nese automakers are very good
at working with suppliers in
a collaborative effort, says
Lucci. That makes suppliers
more flexible. The Japanese are
also better at leveling their pro-
duction schedules. That makes
it easier to predict demand and
go to smaller batch sizes. They
also excel when it comes to
standardized work.
While U.S. assembly lines
are more flexible than they
were a decade ago, the Big
Three are still far behind the
flexibility curve, claims Laurie
Harbour-Felax, president of
the Harbour-Felax Group
(Berkley, MI). Theyve all
made huge progress, but theyre
not yet where they need to be.
Everyone is at different stages
of the game. In addition, most
suppliers are not where they
need to be.
According to Harbour-Felax, the two most flexible
automakers in the world are
Honda Motor Co. (Tokyo) and
Toyota Motor Corp. (Nagoya,
Japan). She says most of their
flexibility efforts have focused
on their body shops.
The key is the framing
station, Harbour-Felax points
out. For instance, Toyota has
developed a flexible system that
allows it to build eight different
vehicle architectures on the
same assembly line. They use
a spider-like mechanism that
welds parts from the inside of
each vehicle rather than from
the outside.
Toyota also continuously
tunes the flexibility of its
assembly plants by applying
32 ASSEMBLY/ March 2009 www.assemblymag.com
Assembly Planbook
Medical device manufacturers rely on robots and other flexible
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www.assemblymag.com March 2009 / ASSEMBLY 33
lean tools and principles. The
automaker recently embarked on a
continuous improvement crusade at it
Takaoka plant in Toyota City, Japan,
which builds numerous vehicles, such
as the Corolla and the Vitz. When themakeover is complete, the extremely
flexible facility will build more models,
faster, on shorter assembly lines than
other Toyota plants.
By investing in a network of highly
flexible assembly plants, Honda has
enhanced its ability to quickly respond
to changes in customer demand,
while also ensuring more efficient use
of overall production capacity. The
automakers facilities in Ohio and
Ontario are capable of building cars
and light trucks on the same line.
During the recent turmoil in the auto
industry, while many manufacturers
struggled to cut capacity and scrambled to
build different vehicle platforms, Honda
calmly sat back and relied on the benefits
of its flexible production system. For
instance, earlier this year, the automaker
shifted production of its Ridgeline pickup
from Alliston, ON, to Lincoln, AL. The
Alabama plant previously assembled
the Odyssey minivan and the Pilot SUV.
Later this year, the majority of V-6
Accord sedan production will shift from
Hondas Marysville, OH, plant to theAlabama facility. The Ohio plant will
increase its production of four-cylinder
Accord sedans in mid-2009, decreasing
imports of Accords to the United States
in response to fluctuating currency rates
and shipping costs.
These moves are part of a series
of production adjustments that [we
are] making in North America to meet
customer demand for fuel-efficient
passenger cars and light trucks, as
well as to ensure the most efficient
use of [our] manufacturing capacity,
says John Mendel, executive vice
president of American Honda Motor
Co. (Torrance, CA). We are leveraging
our flexible manufacturing network to
meet the needs of our customers.
Fundamentals of Flexibility
Many of the basic principles of
flexible manufacturing used in the
auto industry also apply to other
products and production processes.
The fundamentals of flexibility hold
up whether youre making cars or
eyeglasses, says Lucci.Indeed, flexible assembly has been
successfully adopted by manufacturers
in many other industries, ranging
from consumer electronics to medical
devices. Both of those industries tend
to turn over their designs with new and
improved models after a relatively short
product life.
Any market where technology
is changing quickly, such as
cell phones, is ideal for flexible
production. As a rule of thumb,
products that contain subassemblies
that require the same basic parts and
processes as other subassemblies,
such as electric motors, generally
are good candidates for flexible
manufacturing. Thats why many
solar panel manufacturers are
implementing flexible assembly
lines as they ramp up production.
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Capital Spending
To enable flexibility, manufacturers
need equipment designed to accept
change requests. For instance, modular
conveyors are much easier to expand or
reconfigure than rotary dial machines or
other fixed automation. Other assembly
tools, such as robots, linear motors,
machine vision and motion controls,
make it easier to be flexible today than
in the past. But, theres still a lot of
misunderstanding about what flexibility
is and is not, says Harbour-Felax.
Before implementing flexible
assembly lines, manufacturing
engineers should carefully consider
all the pros and cons. For instance,
traditional assembly equipment is
limited by attributes such as processes,
motions, precision, cycle rates, part size
and weight, and component feeding.However, a dedicated machine is
typically less expensive than a flexible
machine.
There are some overlooked costs
associated with flexible equipment.
For example, wiring can be extremely
expensive; installation costs can run
anywhere from $10 to $1,000 per foot,
depending on the type of application.
On a typical assembly line, that easily
translates into thousands of dollars. If
a line needs to be reconfigured, that
work will need to be redone. Thats one
reason why some manufacturers are
investing in wireless technology.
Efficiency is another trade-off
that needs to be carefully considered.
Highly flexible systems may be unable
to match the speed of hard tooling.
Compared with a dedicated machine,
a flexible piece of equipment often has
34 ASSEMBLY/ March 2009 www.assemblymag.com
Assembly Planbook
Automakers have focused their flexibility efforts on the body shop. Photo courtesy Ford Motor Co.
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www.assemblymag.com March 2009 / ASSEMBLY 35
a larger ratio of size vs. throughput. As
production volume increase, flexibility
decreases. If annual production volume
is at least 5 million units, or if the
products market life is expected to be
at least 5 years, manufacturers may bebetter off with a dedicated machine.
Slow applications tend to work the
best with flexible automation, says
Bob Rice, applications team leader
at Automation Tool Co. (Cookeville,
TN). Contrary to popular opinion,
manual operations are the ideal form
of flexibility. Robots are the biggest
flexible tool in the automation world,
but they also have limits, such as parts
feeding. Operators still do most things
better than a robot.
Parts feeding is the most
challenging thing that limits flexibility,
but new technology holds promise,
claims Mark Handelsman, industrial
marketing manager at FANUC Robotics
America Inc. (Rochester Hills, MI).
Flexible feeding and 3D vision are
becoming more prevalent, especially
in applications where parts can vary
in dimension or have a contour. Force
control is another technology that
improves flexibility.
Hard tooling solutions have their
place and will continue, notes David
Huffstetler, market manager at StubliRobotics (Duncan, SC). However,
our appetite for quick delivery of new
products demands flexibility. Choosing
the correct technology is paramount,
because of the design decisions that will
be made later.
The key to maximizing a robot arms
flexibility begins at the design stage,
explains Huffstetler. Speed, dexterity
of envelope and quality of motion
performance are often-overlooked
parameters when considering which
robot to build your cell around.
Understanding these items will attribute
to an optimized workcell. While
there is no doubt that programming
flexibility is paramount to success,
long-term reliability and capability in
the mechanics is what will be important
to realize the true benefits of a flexible
design.
Typically, the first stage of flexible
assembly is the most flexible. As volume
increases and automatic stations are
added, a machine often becomes less
flexible and requires more time and
effort to retool.Motion control also plays a key role
in achieving flexibility. Instead of using
pneumatic actuators or cams, servo-
driven actuators enable engineers to
change motions simply by entering
a new value in the control software.
However, servomotors are typically
more expensive than pneumatic
actuators.
Fixtures are also critical to flexible
assembly systems. Adjustable fixtures
feature one or more sides built on
slides so that the length and width of
the fixture can be quickly changed.
Multipiece, adjustable fixtures are
more expensive than off-the-shelf
fixtures.
Product design is critical to
flexibility, Lucci points out. You need
common access points for tooling and
common end points for fixtures. A
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