Manufacturing Systems Complexity Review: Challenges and Outlook

In the globalized and interconnected market, demand fluctuation along with the requirements of high product quality, low cost, short lead time and high customization may lead to an increase in manufacturing complexity. Over the past years, several methods, following different theories and approaches, have been proposed to analyse the manufacturing complexity. In this paper, the concepts of a manufacturing system's complexity are discussed. This study is a systematic and rigorous attempt to identify and synthesize the research done in the manufacturing systems' complexity domain. Special emphasis is given to the approaches based on a theoretical analytical framework that provide a quantitative analysis of manufacturing systems complexity. These approaches and their applications to industrial problems are presented, classified, and discussed. (c) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Professor D. Mourtzis and Professor G. Chryssolouris.