Group technology, a manufacturing concept for small and medium quantity production, is receiving more and more interest from the machine-building industry all over the world. A prerequisite for the implementation is the grouping of parts, which are similar with respect to manufacturing. As an aid to this a classification system based on a form description is introduced. For the machining of this similar parts several manufacturing concepts according to the complexity of the parts have been developed, e.g. machining centres, flow lines and automats. Two case studios are presented. One is the layout of an unlinked flow line, the other one is the utilization of a machining centre. With the introduction of group technology in a firm, the design and work-planning departments can take advantage. Some hints are given with respect to that possibility.