<p>In recent years, cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) have streamlined operations and fostered continuous innovation across various manufacturing systems. Generative AI (Gen-AI), a subset of AI, helps generate new ideas and perspectives using large language or diffusion models. Gen-AI is transforming the ways of designing, developing, and operating industrial systems. While Gen-AI is widely used to create text, images and video content, its applications in intelligent and adaptive manufacturing remain limited and require precision, reliability, seamless integration, and security. Since the adoption of Gen-AI is still in its infancy, stakeholders need to understand the various factors influencing its implementation. In the present study, the SAP-LAP framework is used to analyze the situation-actors-process (SAP) and learning-actions-performance (LAP) dimensions for the effective implementation of Gen AI to empower flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). In conjunction with the efficient interpretive ranking process (e-IRP), the actors and actions were further ranked. The research findings identify AI technology providers and start-ups, OEMs, and system integrators as the most prominent actors in the implementation of Gen-AI in flexible manufacturing systems, with government and regulatory bodies as key enablers through policy support and governance frameworks. Further results show that ‘Develop modular Gen-AI toolkits tailored to different FMS architectures’ &amp; ‘Promote standards and protocols for secure and ethical use of Gen-AI’ are the topmost actions. Insights from this study will be helpful to practitioners and researchers interested in adopting Gen-AI applications to enhance agility and flexibility in production systems.</p>