The assembly line adapts to fit the products needed. It's a hot field of research with immense potential. If you can alter the manufacturing process on the fly without stopping the flow, you then have the means to make stuff in batches of one. But this flexibility demands tiptoe agility from multi-ton machines that are presently bolted to the floor. To get them to dance requires substituting a lot of mass with a lot of networked intelligence.
Flexibility has to sink deep into the system to make flexible manufacturing work.
The machine tools must themselves be adjustable, the schedules of material delivery must turn on a dime, the labor force must coordinate as a unit, the suppliers of packaging must be fluid, the trucking lines must be adaptable, the marketing must be in sync. That's all done with networks. The next day I may not need any of those. So if you are the acetate or electric company, you'll need to be as nimble as I am if we are to work together. We'll coordinate as a network, sharing information and control, decentralizing functions between us.