There are two opposite ways to equip factories to respond quickly to downstream customer orders: One way is for sequential production, and the other is for concurrent production. Both draw heavily from best practices in lean manufacturing.
Sequential production relies on quick setup and changeover to process a large number of products or orders with a small number production units. Such a factory has just a few machines, cells, or production lines to produce many—for example, 200, 300 or 400—currently selling product types (SKUs) or open orders.