Design for process flexibility: Efficiency of the long chain and sparse structure

The concept of chaining, or in more general terms, sparse process structure, has been extremely influential in the process flexibility area, with many large automakers already making this the cornerstone of their business strategies to remain competitive in the industry. The effectiveness of the process strategy, using chains or other sparse structures, has been validated in numerous empirical studies. However, to the best of our knowledge, there have been relatively few concrete analytical results on the performance of such strategies vis-á-vis the full flexibility system, especially when the system size is large or when the demand and supply are asymmetrical. This paper is an attempt to bridge this gap.