Agile manufacturing is the ability to accomplish rapid changeover between the manufacture of different assemblies, where rapid changeover is defined as the ability to transition from the assembly of one product to the assembly of a similar product with a minimum of change in tooling and software. As a result, it is a natural application for robotics and flexible, maintainable software design.
Software designs can be facilitated by object-orientation and agile-specific software patterns. Agile, computer-assisted gripper customization is enabled by object-oriented designs, and through the use of rapid prototyping techniques, especially when functional parts can be quickly fabricated. Even semi-functional parts provide a measure of agility, insofar as they can help validate the gripper designs.
