THE FACTORY OF THE FUTURE:TRANSFORMABLE STRUCTURES TO MASTER INCREASING TURBULENCE

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TRANSFORMABLE STRUCTURES TO MASTER INCREASING TURBULENCE

Recent restructuring projects have shown that a company’s competitiveness can be enhanced through improved technology and, in particular, through the efficient combination of existing technology with new company structures.

Factories of the future must have transformable structures in order to master the increased tur- bulence that began in the 1990s. Factories must also possess two important features reflecting two current trends in structural change: they must be able to enable for external structure networking and self-organize and self-optimize structures and processes internally. External networking helps to dis- solve company borders that are currently insurmountable and integrate individual enterprises into company networks. Self-organization and self-optimization are intended to enhance the competencies of the value-adding units in accordance with the corporate goal and thus speed up the decision making and change processes of the enterprise.

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