To avoid having to re-fit factories more often and making any upgrade work count, manufacturers are looking to introduce more flexibility in their production and are re-evaluating their strategies for insourcing and outsourcing, said experts from Volkswagen, Ford, Renishaw and Atlas Copco at last week’s AMS Livestream on electrifying production.

“The speed is picking up more and more,” said Danny Auerswald, plant manager at Volkswagen’s Transparent Factory in Dresden. “In the past you had a product lifecycle that was basically seven years, with one big facelift after three or four years. Now you have constant changes, not only driven by the hardware, but also, and especially the software.”