Designing a lean infrastructure

Without the right infrastructure, even the very best manufacturing systems will not operate to their full potential. The author presents a method to design and implement a lean infrastructure. Lean, flexible, just-in-time controlled manufacturing systems consist of modules, or cells, dealing with high level distributed data processing and automated material flow, using highly flexible, computer controlled (and in some cases manually operated) material and information processors within an integrated, multilayered feedback control architecture.