A Review of the High-Mix, Low-Volume Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

The high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) industry has seen growth in the need for product customisation with research to increase manufacturers’ flexibility for the variation in market demands. This paper reviews 152 documents from 2000 to October 2022, discussing work related to HMLV production. From an industrial perspective, this paper analyses the industries with HMLV, revealing production sectors and research areas, categorising the developed work, type of validation, and applications. The results show that most work is not industry-specific, with production planning as the central aspect of the research. While other parts of the production processes and value chain received less attention, the semiconductor and electronics industries are the two most researched with substantial validation, leaving gaps in other industries. Earlier work primarily focused on the theoretical development of production planning; however, the development of Industry 4.0 technologies advocates decision support systems for reactive production planning. This period sees the rise in robotics and automation, with improved robotics capability and human—robot collaboration. Assembly assistance systems were developed for manual production to aid operators in managing the variety of information. This paper serves as a reference for the HMLV manufacturing industry in a structured manner while identifying potential for future research in this field.

Keywords

• HMLV
• production system
• flexible manufacturing
• production and operation management
• robotic production and automation
• decision support system