Flexible Manufacturing

A production line's ability to switch quickly between products, suited to small batches of many varieties.

Flexible manufacturing means a production line can switch quickly between different product models without major equipment changes, suiting it to small-batch, many-variety orders. Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), which emerged in the 1960s–70s, achieved this with CNC machine tools, automated material handling, and computer scheduling. Traditional industrial robots rely on taught, fixed programs and dedicated fixtures at fixed stations, so switching products means reprogramming and re-tooling, which only pays off at large production volumes. One of embodied AI's core selling points is flexibility: the hope is that robots can adapt to new parts and new procedures using vision and learned policies, with little or no reprogramming, making it possible to enter fast-changing lines such as consumer-electronics assembly and automotive final assembly.

ExampleA phone contract manufacturer switches between several models each year; if a robot could learn a new model's assembly motions from just a few demonstrations, changeover time could shrink dramatically.

Also called

FMS, Flexible Manufacturing System

Related

Non-Standard (Custom) Automation · Industrial Robot · Teach-and-Playback Programming · Lights-Out Factory · General-purpose Robot · Machines Replacing Humans

Sources

Flexible manufacturing system - Wikipedia
柔性制造系统 - 维基百科 (Chinese)