Developing a Lean Mass Customization Based Manufacturing

We describe an experimental mass customization based manufacturing system which relies on a sophisticated IT infrastructure and CAE to produce novel wooden design products in a lean and flexible way. The main focus of this paper is on the IT infrastructure where several AI techniques for machine vision, search and planning are applied. The IT system has a service oriented architecture and is composed of heterogeneous distributed components communicating via custom web services. A key component of this system is an smart optimizer which helps to improve warehouse logistics, material utilization and speeds up manual creative work.