The vision of next generation manufacturing – how a company can start

Next generation manufacturing is a strategic tool, which identifies the paths that manufacturing companies may follow in order to stay competitive in today’s changing world. This paper describes the background and the development of a tool to be used in companies with the aim of identifying areas on which the company can and should concentrate its development efforts. The tool has proven workable in practice and approximately 200 Danish manufacturing companies have tested it. Some general trends regarding the future development of these companies can be concluded within the fields of flexible organisations, innovation, utilisation of IT, and collaboration between companies.