Flexibility (engineering)

<h2 id="flexible-manufacturing-system">Flexible Manufacturing System</h2>
<p>Flexibility has been especially thoroughly studied for <a href="/facts/Manufacturing/3qW7bcdy">manufacturing</a> systems. For manufacturing science eleven different classes of flexibility have been identified [Browne, 1984], [Sethi and Sethi, 1990]:
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<ul><li>Machine flexibility - The different operation types that a machine can perform.</li>
<li>Material handling flexibility - The ability to move the products within a manufacturing facility.</li>
<li>Operation flexibility - The ability to produce a product in different ways.</li>
<li>Process flexibility - The set of products that the system can produce.</li>
<li>Product flexibility - The ability to add new products in the system.</li>
<li>Routing flexibility - The different routes (through machines and workshops) that can be used to produce a product in the system.</li>
<li>Volume flexibility - The ease to profitably increase or decrease the output of an existing system. At firm level, it is the ability of a firm to operate profitably at different output levels. Firms often use volume flexibility as a benchmark to assess their performance vis-à-vis their competitors.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:1" href="#fn:1"><sup>1</sup></a></li>
<li>Expansion flexibility - The ability to build out the capacity of a system.</li>
<li>Program flexibility - The ability to run a system automatically.</li>
<li>Production flexibility - The number of products a system currently can produce.</li>
<li>Market flexibility - The ability of the system to adapt to market demands.</li></ul>
<p>These definitions yield under current conditions of the system and that no major setups are conducted or investments are made (except <i>expansion flexibility</i>). Many of the flexibility types are linked to each other; increasing one flexibility type also increases another. But in some cases tradeoffs between two flexibility types are needed.
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<h2 id="bibliography">Bibliography</h2>
<ul><li>Browne, J. <i>et al.</i> "Classification of flexible manufacturing systems", <i>The FMS Magazine</i> 1984 <i>April</i>, 114–117.</li>
<li>Sethi, A.K. and Sethi, S.P. "Flexibility in Manufacturing: A survey", <i>The International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems</i> 1990 <i>2</i>, 289–328.</li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

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<li id="fn:1"><p>Srivastava, Samir K and Bansal, Sahil, "Measuring and Comparing Volume Flexibility across Indian Firms", International Journal of Business Performance Management, 14(1), 2013,  pp. 38-51. <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
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Flexibility (engineering) open-in-new

Flexibility (engineering)