Lean manufacturing system and cell design

In the lean production company, the manufacturing engineers are responsible for designing, building, testing, and implementing the manufacturing cells. These cells are designed for flexibility - they can handle changes in product design as well as external customer demand. The manufacturing engineer must have machine design skills in addition to system design skills. The key here is that the manufacturing equipment is custom designed and custom built for the manufacturing system and for the users of the equipment (the internal customer). However, many companies have designed interim cells using machine tools designed for stand-alone applications in the job shop. Industrial examples of these two kinds of cells are presented.