An industrial need is to develop and operate changeable manufacturing systems that easily can be changed according to customer requirements, production volumes, and new product generations. Such a manufacturing system needs to be developed with the manufacturing footprint in mind, comprising solutions at a conceptual and technical level that can be standardized and duplicated for new geographical locations. This demands the mindset and the incentives of the manufacturing industry to define and implement a life cycle approach when designing, thinking in system generations and recycling of solutions. It requires an integrated development process of the product and the manufacturing system with conscious planning of a ‘manufacturing systems portfolio’ that corresponds to the product portfolio. These are issues addressed in this paper with the objective to investigate available methods or tools for manufacturing system design, how they correspond to the product portfolio, and how they support life cycle perspective.