Nowadays, manufacturing firms are dealing with the unpredictability of market requirements and the frequent changes induced by technological innovation. For this reason, firms are more and more addressing the need to be responsive at an affordable cost. To do so, they are required to develop a capability called reconfigurability. This paper is a review of the existing literature because the current need makes interesting to reflect on the state of the art of reconfigurability as a concept. This reflection has led to focus on reconfigurability characteristics for both their relevance and their relationships with managerial decisions in manufacturing. To this end, a framework has been proposed. It is based on system lifecycle and production levels. These two elements have been deduced from literature and identified as relevant dimensions for decision-making.

Nowadays, manufacturing firms need the reconfigurability capability to be responsive in the current context characterised by unpredictable and frequent market changes and the reduction of product life cycle. Despite the relevance of the subject, a challenge for practitioners is the development of a strategy aimed to increase the level of reconfigurability with long-term goals of customisation and responsiveness. Moreover, traditional manufacturing paradigms are disrupted by the transformation of manufacturing systems in cyber-physical systems (CPS), thus introducing innovative means also to increase the level of reconfigurability in manufacturing systems. This study investigates how the technologies underlying CPS support the reconfigurability capability along system life cycle. Thus the technologies underlying CPS are classified into seven categories and it is shown how they enable the sequence of utilisation of the reconfigurability characteristics (modularity, integrability, diagnosability, scalability, convertibility and customisation) along the system life cycle. The results of the study can guide practitioners in developing reconfigurability as a strategic capability. Moreover, different directions for future research can be considered, as discussed in the conclusion.

The current uncertain and volatile business context is challenging firms worldwide, leading to the need to be responsive at a competitive cost. This trend is so substantial that it even affects industries traditionally competing in rather stable contexts, such as the process industry. Although the process industry includes multiple sectors with different technologies and processes, these share several aspects that make the industry as a whole distinctive to the discrete manufacturing industry. Based on a literature review, this study identifies and describes trends leading the process industry to the need for responsiveness, corresponding solutions to accommodate the need, and related challenges hindering the industrialization and diffusion of solutions in this industry. This study shows that trends, such as the uncertainty and volatility of market requirements, are challenging the process industry to develop reconfigurability solutions across multiple production levels. The development of reconfigurability solutions is hindered by modularity, integrability, co-ordination and collaboration challenges.

In the current context characterized by turbulent market conditions and the increasing relevance of sustainability requirements, reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMSs) offer great potentialities for supply chains and networks. While plenty of contributions have addressed RMSs from a technological and system-specific perspective since the mid-1990s, the research interest for the strategic potentialities of RMSs at the supply chain level is recent and mainly related to building supply chains’ resilience and sustainability. Despite the interest, methods to support supply chains to strategically exploit RMSs are still missing, while being highly needed. In this paper, a method—consisting of an index to assess machines reusability and a mixed integer programming (MIP) algorithm—is provided to support the identification of reusable and reconfigurable machine candidates at the early stage of the strategic network design. The overall method allows machines to be compared based on their reusability and geographical locations. The application of the method, as well as an example referring to the production of emergency devices during the COVID-19 pandemic are reported. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are also discussed, and, among others, strategic parameters related to machines have been identified and elaborated as enablers of supply chain reconfigurability; the proposed method supports practitioners in improving supply chain resilience and sustainability. The method also encourages practitioners towards the development and adoption of reconfigurable machines. Finally, this study also has social impacts for local communities and stimulates customer-centric collaboration among companies belonging to similar industries and sectors.