Flexibility as a key success factor for factory planning
The future of factory design
of volume and variants
production areas quickly
and adaptable buildings
Whether greenfield or brownfield: anyone looking to build or modernize a production site with a future-oriented mindset should place particular emphasis on “flexibility”. Factory performance today must keep pace with rapidly changing market conditions to maintain efficiency and competitiveness.
The design of a “flexible” factory goes beyond production lines or traditional components like internal logistics – it aligns the life cycles of buildings, products, and work processes. This requires fresh perspectives on factory planning and implementation to, for instance, integrate new technologies more rapidly and manage increasing complexity in products and variants.
A key challenge is identifying the appropriate level of flexibility across various factory dimensions based on current and anticipated demand. Ultimately, the goal is always to strike the right balance between flexibility and efficiency.
Our EFESO Insight highlights the core challenges and outlines what truly defines a flexible factory – along with how flexibility can be designed systematically.
Discover the critical success factors: compatibility, modularity, mobility, scalability, and universality – and how these relate to the core action dimensions of production, logistics, infrastructure, and building design.
Three real-world project examples further illustrate how companies bring flexibility to life in their factory designs.
