Agility index of automatic production systems: Reconfigurable logic and open source as agility enablers

Production agility becomes a measurable quantity when its scope is limited to those agility enablers that are demonstrated to positively influence the operation of a company. Strategic and tactical planning, along with flexible production, communication and cooperation infrastructures, were empirically demonstrated, in prior independent research, as significant predictors of financial performance. This paper introduces an index for measuring the ability of a company to timely and profitably exploit windows of upcoming commercial opportunity and a model for calculating the long-term cost of software in agile production environments. The evaluation focuses on the effects of the production infrastructure on the strategic and tactical ability of the company. Through the introduced index and software cost model, the impact of software on the agility of automatic production systems is explained, along with the benefits from reconfigurable production control software build upon open standards.