Document Type

Research Paper

Publication Date

2016

Abstract

Many globalized businesses are trying to cope with growing competition by strategically expanding their dedicated network of production facilities so as to be able to offer and to deliver time and price competitive offers to their clients across the world. In this paper, exploiting Physical Internet principles, we introduce the concept of hyperconnected mobile production that can alternatively enable businesses to dynamically expand and contract as necessary their production capacity in regions worldwide. First, hyperconnected mobile production exploits open fabs from multiple parties readily available in those regions. Second, these fabs are to rely on plug-and-play production modules. These modules are to be flowed in and out of open fabs worldwide by the fab operators or their business clients so as to absorb dynamic production requirements from customers. Third, the production modules are to be dynamically re-configurable through adding and removing plug-and-play modular resources. We first show that hyperconnected mobile production builds on eight innovation threads: distributed, outsourced, on-demand, modular, additive, mobile, containerized and hyperconnected production. We then provide an overall description of key facets of the hyperconnected mobile production concept and finally elicit a number of promising research avenues.

Comments

Paper 15

Publication Title

Progress in Material Handling Research: 2016

ISBN

9781882780191

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