Högskolan i Skövde

The manufacturing environment today is highly turbulent. Hence, the potential to alter factory layout has transformed the layout problem from considering long-term material handling costs to considering essential requirements, such as adaptability and proactive responsiveness to dynamic changes. This is beyond the costs of material handling and machine relocation when reconfiguring the layout. As continuation of the authors’ previous work, this paper proposes to incorporate function block methodology in dealing with the layout issues in the frequently changing environment of job-shop assembly operations so as to increase the autonomy and adaptability of the assembly operations against changes.