Delayed product differentiation strategy in agile manufacturing

Agile manufacturing aims to produce a large variety of products, in a short time, and at a low cost. The delayed product differentiation is a powerful design concept which can be used to achieve agility. In this paper, the implementation of delayed product differentiation strategy in a manufacturing system is discussed. The problem of selecting the designs so as to minimize the number of parts and the manufacturing cycle time is formulated and solved. An illustrative example is presented.