The re-configurable enterprise-an appearing paradigm of future manufacturing

Developments in the last few years highlights that some basic and weighty changes have occurred. Global manufacturing, network societies and no essential innovations are signs for a change. This paper describes a new way to handle these changes. Today´s company needs to change to reconfigurable structures, which fulfil the requirements of dynamic, adaptability, capability of development, management of complexity, robustness, self-similarity and goal-orientation. The re-configurable enterprise is one way to cope with today´s fast changing environment. The basic concept of the re-configurable enterprise has been developed by the Fraunhofer-Institute Factory Operation and Automation. The paper describes four dimensions of the re-configurable enterprise. In particular the organisational dimension is explained in more detail