ABSTRACT
During the mid-1960s, knife market competition became more intense. In the period between 1960 and 1970, cost became the primary concern. Later, quality became a priority. As the market became more and more complex, delivery speed became vital for any customer and a new strategy was formulated: customizability. Companies have to adapt to the environment in which they operate to be more flexible in their operations and to satisfy different market segments (customizability). Flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) have been developed with the hope that they will be able to tackle these new challenges and achieve a balance between product standardization and manufacturing flexibility. A competitive FMS is expected to be flexible enough to respond to small batches of customer demand, and due to the fact that the construction of any new production line is a large investment, current production lines must be able to be reconfigured to keep up with increased frequency of new product designs.
