An economical model for investment decisions in flexible manufacturing processes: an application to sheet metal forming operations

New competitive strategies are followed by modem enterprises based on three fundamental focuses: product quality, shortening of the time to marked and costs reduction. One of the most important evolutions in manufacturing, (in particular in metal forming industry) concern small batches production. Thus, metal stamping industries are highly interested in the achievement of flexible technologies able to make them as reactive as possible to market evolutions providing a capacity to customize their products. In the recent years, researchers working in the field of metal forming have focused a great attention on innovative and more flexible processes allowing to vary products characteristics according to customers needs. Among these processes, incremental forming is rapidly developing. In this paper the authors aim to develop a proper economical model in order to support investment decisions in incremental forming technology.