Flexibility of manufacturing systems, as a key factor of survival in the market, is regarded as the ability of handling changes in variants and volume governed by different capabilities depending on system level and manufacturing process. Research on flexibility has been of interest over years, resulting in a vast field of organizational, technical, and process-based enablers. The practical review in terms of needs, enablers and implementations of changeable production systems is however scarce. The objective of this paper is to present an initial review of industrial practice regarding flexibility in manufacturing systems, based on the current frame of reference and empirical study of two manufacturing companies in Sweden which helps industrial companies to identify their flexibility needs and the required enablers to achieve them.

The growth of research interest in networked production has brought up numerous important concepts aimed at production networks. Still the actual research object seems to be ambiguous, making the exact application of findings insufficient. It appears that there are two main notions of the term Production Network. The first meaning is derived by a single versus a multi-organizational perspective while the second meaning comes from a regional versus global view. Obviously indistinctness exists in this field of research and clarification of terms and concept is required. The objective of this paper is to give an overview of the existing theories in accordance with the industrial practice providing a model to bridge the academic theories to industrial practice. 

Management of production plants on global scale adds diverse challenges to those normally faced within national borders. A constant challenge is to achieve the most efficient network configuration via robust design of production systems. A case study is conducted where commonalities among production plants of a global manufacturing company have been studied in regard to the design of production system within global production networks. The results show three synergetic areas through the global production network. Standardization levels of production system constituents have been also discussed.