Title: Identification of arenas unconquered by agile manufacturing researches and practices through a literature survey

Authors: C.G. Sreenivasa, S.R. Devadasan

Addresses: Department of Production Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore – 641 004, Tamil Nadu, India. ' Department of Production Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore – 641 004, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: During the last two decades, numerous researches and applications of agile manufacturing (AM) have been reported in the literature arena. Yet, there are certain arenas that are not conquered by AM researches and practices. This paper reports a literature survey, which was conducted to identify those unconquered arenas in manufacturing field. During this literature survey, it was found that two artificial intelligence techniques are conspicuously absent in AM researches and practices. It was found out that the AM researches and practices are not applied much in sectors other than automobile, aerospace and electronic industrial sectors. It was found that the AM practices and researches are yet to be applied on several products. This paper is concluded by suggesting that the contemporary researchers may explore the ways of overcoming the hurdles in conquering AM researches and practices on AI techniques, industrial sectors and products that are pinpointed in this paper.

Keywords: agile manufacturing; lean manufacturing; artificial intelligence; AI; engineering products; automobile industry; aerospace industry; electronics industry; services management; operations management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2011.040709

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2011 Vol.9 No.2, pp.227 - 244

Published online: 11 Mar 2015 *

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