A configuration study on manufacturing systems in turbulent environment based on text mining

During the turbulent competitive environment, how to deal with changes and uncertainty has become the core competence. Many innovative manufacturing systems or best practices have been proposed for building the competence. Based on a wide literature review, eighty three manufacturing systems with the capability have been found. In order to formulate the manufacturing strategy, it is necessary to examine the relationships among the systems. A configuration study was proposed based on the keyword frequencies. The Text Mining software was used for extracting the keywords on manufacturing organizations from the literatures and counting the keyword frequencies. Based on the statistical analysis of the keyword frequencies, the manufacturing organizations were clustered to three types: the lean organization, the virtual organization, and the intelligent organization. According to the three manufacturing organizations, the eighty three manufacturing systems were grouped into three clusters. This configuration study provided an operational framework for manufacturing strategy in the turbulent environment.