An approach to the measurement of single-machine flexibility

Flexibility of manufacturing systems has been recognized as one of the vital competitive priorities in manufacturing strategy. However, the meaning and implementation of flexibility remain blurred. The main reason could be that the attributes of manufacturing system flexibility are many and complicated. This research suggests that there are at least two factors that should be considered – namely, efficiency and versatility – in the measurement of manufacturing flexibility. The entropy approach, which was extended from information theory and has been applied comprehensively in the research of market diversity in the economics field, has its limitations in the measurement of manufacturing flexibility. It depicts only the factor of versatility, and not that of efficiency. This research proposes a combination of the entropy approach and the efficiency frontier approach, Data Envelopment Analysis, for the measurement of manufacturing flexibility. This approach has been applied to the measurement of single machine flexibility and a straightforward example is exhibited in this research.