What does Flexibility in Automated Manufacturing Means? [Video]

In the industrial automation world, the word flexibility is often used. We’ve heard about flexible robot grippers, flexible manufacturing, flexible robotic cells and even flexible plants, but what does flexible mean? How can I become flexible? What’s the point of having flexibility? These are all questions that you might have already asked yourself. Let’s try to answer a couple of these questions and make flexibility clearer.

Flexible manufacturing definition

The general definition of flexibility is: being responsive to change, adaptable. In fact, being flexible in terms of automated manufacturing is basically being able to adapt your process to different options. The best way to describe flexibility would be to describe the total opposite of it, rigidity. Having a rigid manufacturing process consists of having a single product that can be produced in a given operation. If the process needs to be modified, it can not be quickly adapted. Most of the time, rigid processes need …