Production of One
Leverage flexible manufacturing to unlock lead time reduction and production scalability.
Delivering Customization Through Flexible Manufacturing
With today’s demand for mass customization and shorter product lifecycles, manufacturers are challenged to deliver highly customized specifications faster and more sustainably. As production volumes decrease and complexity increases, they must adapt their existing systems to maintain throughput and quality.
The era of one-off production is over. To thrive in this competitive landscape, manufacturers must scale personalized production with flexibility and agility. This drives the adoption of modular systems and 3D configuration experiences that support scalable and flexible manufacturing.
The 3DEXPERIENCE® platform offers manufacturers multi-site collaboration and full visibility across operations, enabling seamless collaboration to deliver quality products at a lower cost. By supporting modular manufacturing with marketing-defined variants, the platform aligns engineering and manufacturing processes to accelerate market responsiveness and maintain healthy margins at scale.
Modular Design: The Key To Flexible Manufacturing
Modularity at the product level plays a critical role in enabling flexible manufacturing and business resilience. By designing modular products with pre-defined variants, manufacturers can swiftly adapt product development to market demands while improving manufacturing efficiency and protecting margins.
These modular systems, developed through close collaboration between marketing, engineering and manufacturing teams, allow rapid batch customization without re-engineering core components. This results in reduced production complexity, shorter development cycles and more efficient resource planning. Moreover, modularity helps manufacturers in supporting sustainable practices, such as the reuse of parts and improved lifecycle management.
Sustainability Starts With Flexible Manufacturing
Sustainability has become a strategic imperative for manufacturing companies. Flexible manufacturing supports manufacturers’ sustainability commitments by reducing overproduction, minimizing waste, optimizing resource allocation and improving market responsiveness to eco-conscious consumer demands. By enabling smaller, on-demand production runs, local sourcing and energy-efficient processes, it creates an efficient production process that minimizes environmental impact.
Leveraging Virtual Twins for Flexible Manufacturing
In an era where rapid adaptation drives success, our virtual twin technology redefines how manufacturers design, operate and evolve their production systems by leveraging manufacturing intelligence. Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform enables companies to work in a fully virtual environment, where teams can simulate, validate and optimize flexible production lines before any physical implementation.
This digital transformation also allows for seamless robotics integration, process automation and modular machinery to support efficient reconfiguration and optimized resource allocation. Manufacturers can test a variety of scenarios, such as shifting product variants, optimizing robot coordination or introducing sustainable materials without interrupting operations.
By simulating everything from machine performance to line bottlenecks and energy consumption, virtual twins enable continuous improvement and on-the-fly, rapid adaptation. The result is a future-ready production system capable of mass customization, faster time to market and smarter decision-making while minimizing waste and downtime.
Key Advantages of Flexible Manufacturing With Virtual Twins
Manufacturers can unlock key advantages by harnessing the power of virtual twins for continuous improvement, including:
Achieving mass customization at speed
Adapt quickly to demand fluctuations while achieving lead time reduction for faster market responsiveness
Optimizing engineering with modular lines
Enable quick changeovers and improve production scalability based on order variations
Improving cost control for low-volume runs
Reduce downtime and improve resource allocation through cost-effective
Enhancing agility with real-time data
Make informed decisions faster with digital monitoring and simulation
Explore Our Customers' Stories
CNBM Triumph Robotics
This Shanghai-based robotic line builder enhanced precision and performance in highly customized production processes by leveraging virtual twin technology.
Yutaka Electronics
This Japanese robotic assembly line builder improved traceability and flexibility in its robotic assembly lines through digital continuity and real-time data integration.
Tezmaksan
Tezmaksan Robot Technologies boosted agility by integrating robotic automation with real-time data, streamlining production and enhancing operational responsiveness.
CenterLine Windsor
This Canadian industrial automation process and technology company streamlined digital design processes to support flexible tooling and robotic solutions, enhancing efficiency and reducing deployment time.
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Develop, integrate, manage and maintain flexible production lines with autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).
Leverage virtual twin-based 3D quotations to increase your sales hit ratio while enhancing customer experiences and meeting diverse line building needs quickly.
Flexible Manufacturing: The Backbone of Smart Factories
Flexible manufacturing is a production approach that allows factories to adapt to changes at speed — whether it's switching between different products, adjusting to supply chain disruptions or scaling production up or down. Instead of rigid, linear setups, flexible manufacturing relies on modular production lines, robotics integration, scenario simulations and real-time data integration to stay responsive and efficient.
A flexible production system is the key enabler of mass customization that allows factories to efficiently adapt production lines to demand fluctuations — here’s why:
- Supply chain resilience: Supports rapid adaptation to material shortages or disruptions, ensuring continuous delivery of customized products
- Shorter time to market: Facilitates faster transitions from design to production, helping companies meet customer expectations for quick delivery of custom goods
- Enhanced equipment efficiency: Manages resource allocation effectively by maximizing the use of assets and minimizing downtime between product variants
- Rapid product variation: Enables quick changeovers of production lines between different products or designs through machine flexibility to satisfy personalized customer demands
- Scenario simulation: Allows manufacturers to simulate production changes through the virtual twin before implementing them, reducing costly errors and speeding up reconfiguration
A flexible manufacturing process is powered by a combination of advanced technologies that make manufacturing more adaptive, resilient and customer-focused. Key technologies include the virtual twin which simulates and optimizes production digitally, modular and reconfigurable production lines that enable quick product switches and IIoT networks that connect equipment for real-time responsiveness. Besides that, AI and data analytics can predict shifts in demands and optimize operations, while robotics integration and automation provide speed and precision. Cloud collaboration tools and 3D configuration platforms also help manufacturers tailor products to individual customer needs without losing efficiency.
To manage lead time reduction while offering product personalization, manufacturers must adopt a digitally connected yet flexible manufacturing practices. Key approaches include:
- Using real-time supply chain insights and risk management tools to ensure you stay responsive to disruptions, avoiding shortage delays
- Implementing cloud-based collaboration and digital continuity to connect sales, engineering and production teams, accelerating product development
- Leveraging virtual twins to simulate and optimize production setups in advance, reducing time spent on trial-and-error in physical environments
- Adopting modular, reconfigurable production lines to switch between product variants without downtime or retooling delays swiftly
- Utilizing 3D selling experiences and configuration tools to help customers personalize products digitally and send that configuration data directly to manufacturing systems for efficient execution
Virtual twins support flexible manufacturing by providing a digital replica of production systems powered by real-time data, enabling simulation, testing and optimization without disrupting physical operations.
Powered by Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform, manufacturers can leverage the virtual twin to adapt production lines to new products rapidly, demand fluctuations or sustainability goals. This helps reduce risk, accelerate market responsiveness and minimize waste, making flexible manufacturing more efficient, scalable and sustainable.
Traditional production lines are built for volume and repetition with a focus on linear mass production of standardized goods. However, they are often executed at the expense of flexibility and customization.
On the other hand, flexible manufacturing systems offers a smarter approach through cost-effective solutions — here’s how they deliver measurable value:
- Profitable production for small batch customization: With 3D selling platforms, personalized orders go straight into production without sacrificing efficiency
- Predictive maintenance and process automation: Virtual twins and real-time monitoring help identify and fix inefficiencies before they become costly
- Increased supply chain resilience: Enable rapid adaptation to disruptions with digitally connected systems that can shift sourcing and production strategies
- Enhanced market responsiveness to demand fluctuations: Integrated cloud collaboration tools allow sales, engineering and manufacturing to work in sync
- Minimized downtime and quick changeovers: Flexible production lines can be quickly reconfigured to handle different products, reducing downtime
Dassault Systèmes enables manufacturers to transition from rigid, traditional systems to highly agile and flexible manufacturing processes through the support of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. This collaborative, cloud-based environment connects sales, engineering and operations teams to foster effective decision-making.
Powered by our platform, the virtual twin allows manufacturers to simulate, test and optimize production lines in a digital environment — reducing risks, development time and operational costs.
To further enhance flexibility, Dassault Systèmes supports the integration of 3D selling and configuration tools that capture customer needs through real-time data and feed them directly into the production workflow, enabling true mass customization with maximized efficiency.
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