Katarzyna Smolińska

The customer market is becoming more and more demanding. Customers want to have influence on the final shape, form, functionality and characteristics of the product. As a result, entrepreneurs are forced to abandon the Make-to-Stock system in favour of the MTO (Make-to-Order) concept, with the purpose of not only meeting the customer’s needs but also, for example, reducing the costs by manufacturing exactly the number of products which is currently demanded on the market. The article describes an example of a production task performed in the cellular structure. The customer required a substantial and abrupt increase (by 65%) of the production task. In order to tackle the problem, logistics engineering and lean manufacturing methods were applied. Having regard to the Industry 4.0 perspective, a concept of automated work cells was presented in order to minimise the role of the operator.