Manufacturing flexibility: Measures and relationships

The study and formulation of manufacturing flexibility measures has been inhibited by the lack of a conceptual structure to encourage model development. In this paper, we introduce a framework to facilitate the development of flexibility measures. It also proves to be useful in validating measures of flexibility types. Measures of various flexibility types are drawn from the literature and compared with the purposes and criteria for the flexibility types and the ‘best’ measures are presented. For volume and expansion flexibility, the framework is used to develop new measures. This is followed by a discussion of the relationships among flexibility types and some sample relationships are highlighted.