The marketing-manufacturing interface and manufacturing flexibility

Research has found that while flexibility is a prime advantage of new flexible manufacturing technology (FMT), it has not yet become a major competitive priority for North American and European manufacturers. This is because, to a certain extent, there exists little guidance for firms to successfully incorporate the flexibility advantages into their marketing/manufacturing interface strategy. This paper takes a closer look at traditional notions of production/marketing coordination and attempts to find its links with manufacturing flexibility provided by recent evolving flexible manufacturing technology. The authors examine various flexibility concepts from diverse disciplines and propose a contingency theory based Flexibility-Uncertainity Model (FUM) as a conceptual framework to facilitate the understanding of the interactions between environmental uncertainty and flexibility needs. Once the relation between the two is explored, they present ways to employ different types of flexibility to cope with various forms of environmental uncertainty. Several ‘real-world’ examples and case studies abound to support the arguments made in this article are also discussed.