
589Trends in Supply Chain Management
responsibility. Equipment is being designed to be more exible—faster changeovers and
setups and wider scope of products produced. Where equipment was once designed to
operate separately from the employees or replace employees, more equipment and pro-
cesses are being designed to blend employee and equipment skills to get the most from
each resource. Even facilities are being designed with exibility in mind. Automobile
manufacturers are designing new plants that are capable of producing multiple models
within the same plant, at the same time. This form of exibility will make it possible to
more closely ma ...