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In the last 30 years many Japanese companies have set up plants in the UK. This has brought many benefits, one of which being the introduction of their unique style of management. The last decade has seen an increasing use of these practices in the UK. A survey of the Japanese companies based in the UK was carried out by a team of researchers at the University of Strathclyde. Discusses the use of JIT, one of the strategies examined in the survey.

Presents a table comparing business process for the future manufacturing enterprises with a set of mapping techniques and methodologies. The first section is a brief introduction about the current situation for many European manufacturing companies. After that, describes the process‐based organization and a set of generic processes. Presents two key processes which were identified for each of five enterprises of the future suggested by Puttick. Following this, gives a description of the most common techniques and methodologies currently used, together with an evaluation of them. The table obtained by matching the processes with the techniques can be used as a guide when choosing the most suitable mapping technique or methodology for a enterprise’s key processes.

This paper aims at analyzing different possible assembly systems, including innovative potential configurations such as the fully flexible assembly systems (FAS), by defining a novel analytical model that focuses on the concept of agility and its impact on the whole system performance, also evaluating the economic convenience in terms of the unit direct production cost.

The authors propose a comparison model derived by Newton’s second law, introducing a quantitative definition of agility (acceleration), resistance of an assembly system to any change of its operative state (inertia) and unit direct production cost (force). Different types of assembly systems (manual, flexible and fully FAS) are analyzed and compared using the proposed model, investigating agility, system inertia and their impact on the unit direct production cost.

The proposed agility definition and the proposed comparison model have been applied considering different sets of parameters as independent variables, such as the number of components to assemble (product model complexity) and the target throughput of the system. The main findings are a series of convenience areas which either, for a given target unit direct production cost (force), defines the most agile system to adopt or, for a given target agility (acceleration), defines the most economical system to adopt, as function of the independent variables.

The novelty of this work is, first, the analytical definition of agility applied to assembly systems and contextualized by means of the definition of the new comparison model. The comparison between different assembly systems on the basis of agility, and by using different sets of independent variables, is a further element of interest. Finally, the resulting convenience areas represent a desirable tool that could be used to optimally choose the most suitable assembly system according to one or more system parameters.