R. Beach a , A.P. Muhlemann a , D.H.R. Price a, * , A. Paterson b , J.A. Sharp b a University of Bradford Management Centre, Emm Lane, Bradford BD9 4JL, West Yorkshire, UK b Canterbury Business School, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7PE, UK Received 1 February 1997; accepted 1 November 1998 Abstract In the eld of operations management, manufacturing exibility has been the subject of much academic enquiry. Moreover, the need for this fundamental characteristic has never been more urgent. However, a comprehensive un- derstanding of the subject remains elusive. An extensive review of the literature is used to examine the issues surrounding the concept of manufacturing ex- ibility. Specically: the use of manufacturing exibility as a strategic objective, the relationship exibility has with environmental uncertainty, the use of taxonomies as a vehicle for furthering understanding of the types of exibility, the nature of exibility, and its measurement. Through this process of synthesis, the paper attempts to establish the extent to which knowledge of manufacturing exibility has now progressed. Suggestions for future research topics in exibility are also presented. 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Manufacturing; Flexibility; Management; Research; Survey 1. Introduction Whether possessing the capability to cope with uncertainty will necessarily provide competitive advantage is not clear. Much of the success of manufacturers in countries such as Japan and Korea has been attributed to their exibility and specically the application of advanced tech- nology. However, in a comparative study of Jap- anese and US FMS Jaikumar (1986) attributed the superior performance of Japanese systems, not to exible technology but rather to their technological literacy. The acquisition of exible technology as a direct response to changing markets is not neces- sarily the panacea it is widely believed to be. In- deed, in some circumstances, the trade-os that must be made between dedicated equipment and exible technology may restrict competitiveness (Hill and Chambers, 1991). This point is supported by Kulatilaka and Marks (1988) who conclude, ``the strategic value of exibility can, under some conditions, be negative'', particularly, when un- certainty can be limited or constrained by contract. European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 www.elsevier.com/locate/orms * Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-1274-234351; fax: +44- 1274-546866. E-mail address: dhrprice@bradford.ac.uk (D.H.R. Price). 0377-2217/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 3 7 7 - 2 2 1 7 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 6 2 - 4 In short, ``more exibility does not always mean a more economic solution'' (Lenz, 1992b) particu- larly when the scale of economies are high (Gupta, 1993). Therefore ``without a clear strategic direc- tion with regard to manufacturing, the new man- ufacturing technologies can become an expensive solution in search of a problem'' (Correa, 1994). Nonetheless, manufacturing exibility remains a key strategic objective of many manufacturing companies. Adamand Swamidass (1989) assert that ``the core content of a manufacturing strategy in- cludes cost, quality, exibility and technology'', while Collins andSchemenner (1993) note that when asked to articulate the manufacturing task the usual priorities mentioned are: ``product quality; product cost; delivery dependability, and exibility''. Whilst the form of exibility cited is unclear, it would ap- pear that the ability to produce to the least cost is no longer the dominant factor in remaining competi- tive. In the past, demand was more stable, there was less product variety and life cycles and lead times were longer (Chambers, 1995). Now, the capacity to absorb uctuations in demand economically, to develop and introduce new products quicker (Gai- mon and Singhal, 1992) using existing facilities are seen as important competitive issues. Such consid- erations have been a catalyst for the interest now being shown in manufacturing exibility. However, in spite of the recognition that man- ufacturing and engineering management have a signicant contribution to make to the achieve- ment of corporate objectives, the use of manufac- turing exibility, in general, remains in the realms of operational management and, most closely as- sociated with process technology. As such its use has been largely reactive (Gerwin, 1993), providing the production process with the ability to modify itself in the face of uncertainty (Kulatilaka and Marks, 1988), i.e. providing an adaptive response (Gupta and Goyal, 1989). Clearly, before the full potential of manufacturing exibility can be real- ised, its acquisition must be elevated in the deci- sion making process from the operational to the strategic. However, a prerequisite of this occurring is that the concepts of manufacturing exibility and the implications of its acquisition and man- agement, are understood by those responsible for developing the capability. 2. Manufacturing exibility and uncertainty An early denition of manufacturing exibility is provided by Gupta and Goyal (1989) who, quoting Buzacott and Mandelbaum (1985), credit Mascarenhas (1981) as having dened it as ``the ability of a manufacturing system to cope with changing circumstances or instability caused by the environment''. Cox (1989) denes manufac- turing exibility as ``the quickness and ease with which plants can respond to changes in market conditions''. Adopting an operational view, Na- garur (1992) denes exibility as ``the ability of the system to quickly adjust to any change in relevant factors like product, process, loads and machine failure''. However, a more comprehensive deni- tion might be ``the ability to change or react with little penalty in time, eort, cost or performance'' (Upton, 1994). Whilst by no means exhaustive or particularly comprehensive, the above denitions illustrate three important points. They reect the breadth and diversity in the understanding of the subject, they refer to the ability to respond to change, and they point to the use of exibility to accommodate uncertainty. The use of exibility for the purpose of accommodating uncertainty is a notion which has received broad recognition, but the types of uncertainty a system can be expected to address appears to be dependent on the operational level from which it is viewed, e.g. the process cell, the function or the manufacturing plant. A broad range of rationales for acquiring ex- ibility has been suggested. Frazelle (1986) claims exibility is required in order to maintain com- petitiveness in a changing business environment, and cites current issues such as a rapidly decreas- ing product half-life, the inux of competitors, an increasing demand for product changes and the introduction of new products, materials and pro- cesses. While Slack (1983) suggests the incentives to seek exibility are founded in the instability and unpredictability of the manufacturers' operational environment, developments in production tech- nology such as FMS and robotics, and the wid- ening aims of production to progress beyond cost and productivity issues to manufacturing system exibility. An organisational perspective on the 42 R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 rationale for acquiring exibility is provided by Gunnigle and Daly (1992) who cite the necessity for higher productivity to decrease unit costs; an organisation's need to adapt production strategy to accommodate uctuations in energy prices, in- terest rates and ination; and reduced skill re- quirements as a consequence of advances in technology. It is clear from the above that each type of uncertainty in its turn requires a dierent and particular type of exibility to accommodate it. Perhaps the earliest recognition of this fact was that of Gerwin (1987) whose attempt at associat- ing types of uncertainty with types of exibility is summarised in Table 1. More recently, Correa (1994) has suggested that environmental uncertainty and variability in outputs are the two main reasons that manufac- turing exibility is sought. These two factors, in whatever form they may materialise, can be translated into types of operational change which can be further categorised according to whether the need for change is planned or unplanned. Unplanned changes, either originating internally or externally, are referred to as stimuli, i.e. the cause of the requirement for exibility. The sources of stimuli, Correa suggests, can be cate- gorised as either process, labour, suppliers, cus- tomers, society, corporate and other functions and competitors. Moreover, unplanned change has ve main dimensions: size, novelty, frequen- cy, certainty and rate. In response, management attempt to impose forms of control and as a consequence exibility is required to handle those elements that remain. This is shown diagram- matically in Fig. 1. The ``exibility box'' shown in the diagram is expanded into a set of manufac- turing system exibility types, namely: new product, mix, volume and delivery exibility (Slack, 1989) to which a fth exibility type, system robustness is added. The framework primarily focuses on the eects of stimuli (unplanned change) and in particular, ``managerial actions which aim at dealing with the eects of unplanned change'' and ``the amount of unplanned change which the organisation has to handle before the occurrence of the change'' (Correa, 1994). Consequently, manufacturing exibility is viewed as a reactive capability and alternative uses of it or requirements for it are not considered in any detail. Conversely, Hyun and Ahn (1992) cite four strategies for using exibility, namely, ``reactive internal uncertainty'', ``reactive external uncer- tainty'', ``proactive internal uncertainty'' and ``proactive external uncertainty''. Alternatively, Gerwin (1993) suggests that the use of exibility can be represented by the four generic strategies: ``adaptive'', e.g. the defensive or reactive use of exibility to accommodate unknown uncertainty; ``redenition'', e.g. the proactive use of exibility to raise customer expectations, increase uncer- tainty for its rivals and gain competitive edge; ``banking'', e.g. the defensive use of exibility to accommodate known types of uncertainty such as surges in demand or alternatively the proactive use of surplus exibility to redene competitive con- ditions; and ``reduction'', e.g. the use of long term contracts with customers and suppliers, preventive maintenance and total quality control pro- grammes and designing for manufacture to limit the need for manufacturing exibility. Table 1 Association of exibility types and uncertainty, Gerwin (1987) Flexibility type Uncertainty Mix Uncertainty as to which products will be accepted by customers created a need for mix exibility Changeover Uncertainty as to the length of product life cycles leads to changeover exibility Modication Uncertainty as to which particular attributes customers want . . . leads to modication exibility Rerouting Uncertainty with respect to machine downtime makes for rerouting exibility Volume Uncertainty with regard to the amount of customer demand for the products oered leads to volume exibility Material Uncertainty as to whether the material inputs to a manufacturing process meet standards gives rise to the need for material exibility Sequence Sequence exibility . . . arises from the need to deal with uncertain delivery times of raw materials R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 43 Support for this last approach is provided by Upton (1994) who suggests that modular design, inventory and focusing plants are all ways of re- ducing the need for exibility. Newman et al. (1993) suggests that the method used to reduce the eects of both external and internal uncertainty can be related to product and process character- istics. Companies mass producing a narrow range of products may reduce internal uncertainty and limit the amount of external uncertainty they need to accommodate by using dedicated technology, centralised infrastructures and buers before and after the process. Conversely, companies process- ing a wide range of products and volumes can use exible technology and a decentralised infrastruc- ture to accommodate the eects of external un- certainty and internal buers to limit internal uncertainty. Interestingly, Correa's research provides em- pirical evidence to support this view, categorising the controlling techniques used by management to limit the amount of uncertainty the system expe- riences as: monitoring and forecasting, co-ordina- ting and integrating, focusing and conning, delegating and subcontracting, hedging and sub- stituting, negotiating, advertising and promoting, maintaining, updating and training. These tech- niques can be applied, either to the source of the stimuli or to the way the system is aected and as a consequence reduce the need for, or the magnitude of, the exibility required. An observation with important implications for those seeking to de- velop exible manufacturing capabilities is that of Ettlie and Penner-Hahn (1994) who speculate that ``if rms knew their markets better they would not need as much exibility'', e.g. a better knowledge of the product features required, expected demand, anticipated product life-cycles and competitor's strategies, etc. would reduce the magnitude of the exibility needed. That exibility and uncertainty are inexorably linked, there is no doubt, but whether the capa- bility to be exible is best used reactively, e.g. as an insurance policy to guard against shortening product life cycles (Gaimon and Singhal, 1992) and thereby prolong the service life of the manu- facturing facility (Chen et al., 1992) or proactively, e.g. to gain competitive advantage (Zhao and Steier, 1993) seems to be a matter still open to debate. Ultimately, this may have more to do with an enterprise's values and norms and how these inuence business strategy than any overt decision on the part of management. In summary: several important issues have been raised. A number of authors have suggested that whilst exibility is frequently used as a foil for uncertainty, the manifestation of uncertainty is dependent upon the operational level from which it is viewed. Further, specic types of exibility are required to accommodate the eects of each type of uncertainty. The magnitude of the capability required is determined by the eectiveness with which uncertainty can be controlled by established management techniques. These techniques can be applied at both a strategic and operational level. In addition, manufacturing exibility can be used strategically in a number of ways, which it has been speculated is dependent, in part, upon issues Fig. 1. Linkages between dimensions of change and exibility, reproduced from Correa (1994). 44 R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 of cultural and ideology. These terms have been discussed, in an organisational context, by Butler (1991). 3. Types of exibility A dominant feature of previous work noted by both Sethi and Sethi (1990), and Upton (1994) has been the use of taxonomies to categorise the var- ious types of exibility. While undeniably con- tributing to the subject these categorisations have probably done more to ``underscore the fact that there are frequently multiple types of exibility with which a manager is concurrently concerned'' than to advance an overall understanding of the concept. Indeed, Sethi and Sethi (1990) noted the existence of at least 50 dierent terms for the various types of exibility referred to in the liter- ature; denitions, which ``are not always precise and are, at times even for identical terms, not in agreement with one another''. Swamidass (1988) attributes the diculties of understanding exi- bility to: the use of exibility terms with scopes which overlap, the use of exibility terms which have dierent meanings and, the use of exibility terms which are aggregates of others. This view has been endorsed by Chung and Chen (1990) and Bernardo and Mohamed (1992). Perhaps as a consequence of this, the literature survey has become a characteristic of manufac- turing exibility research. Considered below are two of the more comprehensive and informative studies. The rst, Gupta and Goyal (1989) is concerned with the classication of the literature based on the dierent ways in which exibility has been dened and its measurement approached. The structure of this survey follows a classication system origi- nally developed by Kumar (1987) which is based on methods of measuring exibility, while emp- hasising the distinction between qualitative (de- scriptive) and quantitative (computable) measures. Using a small but representative sample of the literature Gupta and Goyal (1989) illustrate the ``multitude of opinions'' and the variety of exi- bility types dened in the literature by comparing them against those dened by Browne et al. (1984). In the opinion of the authors and others (Lim, 1986; Yilmaz and Davis, 1987) the original eight categories of Browne et al. represent ``the most comprehensive'' classication and are reproduced in Table 2. The result of the analysis completed by Gupta and Goyal (1989) is a matrix in which each column represents a type of exibility as dened by Browne et al. and each row represents the terms used by a particular author. The heading under which each term has been placed in the matrix has been determined by the degree of similarity be- tween the term's denition and that of Browne et al. As a consequence, not all the terms have been included in the table, which is described as being ``based on a subjective view'' (Table 3). (Note also the use of the term ``process sequence exibility'' rather than the ``operation exibility'' term used by Browne et al. (1984). A characteristic of these taxonomies is that they tend to be hierarchical in construction and related to a specic operational level (contrast Slack, 1983; Barad and Sipper, 1988; Mandelbaum, 1978). Table 3 lends support to the approach adopted by Chung and Chen (1990) who noted that despite the numerous attempts at dening exibility, the term remained unclear. A ``exibil- ity map'' rather than a hierarchical model is sub- sequently developed which, attempts to clarify the relationships between exibility types. Gerwin (1993) exploits the notion that hierarchical tax- onomies may encourage the proliferation of exi- bility types, to argue for the development of a taxonomy that can be applied at dierent hierar- chical levels. By virtue of its universality, he speculates, a taxonomy that can be applied at the machine level, the cell level, the plant level, etc. may reduce the need for context specic exibility types. The proposed taxonomy, mix, changeover, modication, volume, rerouting and material exibility is derived from the identication of the strategies used to accommodate specic un- certainties. However, while high levels of aggregation can facilitate understanding by removing unnecessary levels of detail, general categories of exibility which subsume lower order exibility types run the risk of needing interpretation and thereby being of R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 45 reduced value. Therefore, ``a basic issue that must be resolved in dening manufacturing exibility is the level at which it is to be considered'' (Gerwin, 1987). A further issue, which has proved dicult to quantify, is the interrelationships that exist be- tween the exibility types. However, these rela- tionships are a major inuence on an enterprise's overall capability. This view is underscored by various examples in the literature e.g. Gupta and Goyal (1989) suggest that a knowledge of the ``trade-os'' which exist between the various types of exibility could help with the formulation of strategy, and Newman et al. (1993) consider a thorough understanding of the manufacturing options and their interactions as being integral to the formulation of an eective manufacturing strategy. The absence of a suitable means of modelling complex hierarchical interrelationships may be a contributing factor to the diculties being experienced in this area. In the second study, as well as documenting the evolution of the concept of manufacturing exi- bility Sethi and Sethi (1990) also attempt to ``fa- cilitate an overview of the various types of exibility and their interrelationships''. A set of exibility types is subsequently developed which, like Gupta and Goyal (1989) follows that provided by Browne et al. (1984). The original eight exi- bility types are expanded to eleven, which in the Table 2 Browne's original taxonomy of exibility types (Browne et al., 1984) Flexibility type Denition Machine the ease of making the changes required to produce a given set of part types Process the ability to produce a given set of part types, each possibly using dierent materials, in several ways Product the ability to changeover to produce a new (set of) product(s) very economically and quickly Routing the ability to handle breakdowns and to continue producing the given set of part types Volume the ability to operate an FMS protably at dierent production volumes Expansion the capability of building a system and expanding it as needed, easily and modularly Operation the ability to interchange the ordering of several operations for each part type Production the universe of part types that the FMS can produce Table 3 Classication of exibility literature according to Browne et al. (1984) taxonomy, reproduced from Gupta and Goyal (1989) Author(s) Machine Process Product Routing Volume Expan- sion Process sequence Production Mandelbaum (1978) Action State Buzacott (1982) Machine Job Son and Park (1987) Process Equip- ment Demand Product Zelenovic (1982) Adapta- tion Application Gerwin (1982) Design Parts Routing Volume Mix Frazelle (1986) Design Parts Routing Volume Mix Carter (1986) Machine Mix Mix Change Routing Expan- sion Production Azzone and Bertele (1987) Process Product Routing Production Barad and Sipper (1988) Machine Setup Process Routing Opera- tions Chatterjee et al. (1984) Part Specic Part Mix Routing Gustavsson (1984) Product Demand Machine Slack (1983) Quality New Product Volume Product Mix 46 R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 authors' words ``deviate from their view occa- sionally''. Suggested methods of measurement are also developed for specic types of exibilities and their interrelationships. The eleven types of exibility are: machine, material handling, operation, process, product, routing, volume, expansion, program, production and market exibility. Of these, material handling, program and market exibility are wholly new additions to the taxonomy of Browne et al. (Table 4). The rst three of the eleven, are considered as basic system components, whilst the remaining eight apply to the manufacturing system as a whole. The interrelationships of these eleven ex- ibilities are shown diagrammatically in Fig. 2. The framework depicted in the diagram can be viewed from two perspectives. First, the compo- nent exibilities contribute to those of the system, which in turn inuence the aggregate exibilities. Alternatively, the manufacturing strategy dictates the extent of the system exibilities that in their turn dictate the component exibilities required. The work of Sethi and Sethi places manufac- turing exibility rmly in the wider context of the organisation and the business environment and therefore the strategic exibility arena, emphasi- sing the role these broader issues play in the pur- suance of exibility. It also acknowledges that ``sophisticated computer and information tech- nology and a exible organisational structure un- derlie'' each of the exibility types. In summary: manufacturing exibility can be viewed as a multidimensional concept rather than as an independent variable that can be dened and measured in isolation. It is a product of a number of important enablers such as corporate culture, management structure, process technology, facility layout, and information systems. The development of a generic taxonomy is likely to remain elusive as manufacturing exibility clearly possesses both a strategic and an operational dimension; it can Table 4 Flexibility types additional to Browne's original taxonomy (Sethi and Sethi, 1990) Flexibility type Denition Material exibility of a material handling system is its ability to move dierent part types eciently for proper positioning and processing through the manufacturing facility it serves Program the ability of the system to run virtually unattended for a long enough period Market the ease with which the manufacturing system can adapt to a changing market environment Fig. 2. Linkages between the various exibilities, reproduced from Sethi and Sethi (1990). R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 47 manifest itself in many forms at various and dis- tinct operational levels in an enterprise. A more positive contribution to the work in this area is the emphasis placed on the relationships which exist between each type of exibility, underscoring the need to understand the implications of acquiring and implementing manufacturing exibility from a strategic, as well as from an operational perspec- tive. 4. The nature of exibility In addition to the eorts that have been di- rected at identifying and dening the components of exibility, attempts have also been made to characterise the concept and nature of exibility. Slack (1983), commenting on work by Wild (1980) and the notion that production (operations) ob- jectives ``fall into two groups; those related to customer service and those related to resource productivity'', concluded that ``exibility is the same class of objective as reliability, it is both a condition to be applied to other objectives and an inherent characteristic of the system itself ''. Later, Easton and Rothschild (1988) adopted a comple- mentary position, thus: ``exibility, unlike most other organisational variables, is a second order dimension. It concerns changes in state rather than the states themselves''. However, perhaps reect- ing changes in the business environment and management attitudes, Correa (1994) considers exibility to have now become an important rst order competitive criterion. For suppliers working with customers on concurrent or simultaneous engineering projects, exibility is no longer re- garded as just a facilitator of traditional order wining criteria, e.g. delivery time, reliability, cost, quality, but an important order winner in its own right. Mandelbaum (1978) describes exibility in two main contexts: action exibility, where outside intervention is required before the system can re- spond to change and, state exibility where a system's capacity to respond to change is con- tained within the system. Conversely, Frazelle (1986) approaches the subject from a slightly broader perspective preferring to categorise exi- bility in terms of its long and short term strategic eects. He denes long term exibility as the ``re- duced eort required to recongure for new pro- duction tasks and business strategies because of changes in the production program and business plan and changes in the quantitative and qualita- tive capacity requirements of the business'' and short term exibility as the ``reduced eort neces- sary to reset between known production tasks within the scope of an existing production pro- gram or business plan''. An economist's perspec- tive is provided by Carlsson (1989), who categorises exibility as being either Type I or Type II. The former refers to the exibility which is inherent in the production process and its ability to deal with ``foreseeable events'' (internal exi- bility) and the latter to the ability to respond to ``uninsurable changes in the market'' and ``un- programmable advances in technology'' (external exibility). Upton (1994) denes external exibility as capabilities possessed by the company and used to accommodate ``sources of variability to which the rm must respond'' and which are ``seen as exible by the market'', and internal exibility as ``the operations strategy and set of capabilities a rm nurtures to respond to its environment''. A useful attempt at ``clarifying and unifying the denitions of manufacturing exibility'' is pro- vided by Hyun and Ahn (1992) who construct a framework using the various research studies of manufacturing exibility. In this framework, each study is classied in one of three groups as either, system, environment-associated or decision-hier- archical, according to the perspective of the re- search. From the system view, system exibility is the sum of the exibilities of the system's functions. Similarly, a functional exibility, such as manu- facturing, is composed of component level exi- bilities which are further classied as: (i) ``software'', e.g. control exibility, worker exi- bility, and (ii) ``hardware'', e.g. machine exibility and routing exibility. The system view emphasises the need to co-ordinate the management and de- velopment of all functional exibilities to achieve total system exibility. A similar holistic view is adopted with the management and development of the function's component exibilities. 48 R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 The environment-associated or traditional view of exibility is characterised by the notion of in- ternal and external environments and the interac- tion of the component exibilities with the environmental uncertainties, i.e. expansion exi- bility, product, mix, volume and program exi- bility. These exibilities are further classied as being either ``static'', usually embodied in process technology, or ``dynamic'', usually embodied in the organisational culture. The third group, decision-hierarchical com- prises of long term (strategic), mid term (tactical) and short term (operational) exibility. These are dened respectively as: (i) the ability of a system to respond to: market changes, changes in strat- egy, new product introduction and basic design changes, (ii) the ability to operate at varying rates, to handle a variety of parts of known basic design, to accept random, minor changes and to convert the plant for alternative use, and (iii) the ability to reset and readjust between known production tasks, to permit a high degree of variation in sequencing and scheduling, etc. Flexibility types categorised under the groups are classied as being either dynamic or static in nature. At a lower level, Slack (1983) uses a manufac- turing systems taxonomy of ve exibility types: product, mix, volume, delivery and quality (later, Slack, 1987, quality was excluded) to extend the concept of exibility to consider: the range of states a system can adopt, the cost of making a change as distinct from the cost of providing the capability to change, and the time to make the change. The latter two ``dimensions'' being de- scribed as ``the friction elements of the exibility of a system'' and as ``the manifestation of the di- culty of making a change''. Slack's early work on the nature of exibility appears to have informed the work of a number of research community members (Gerwin, 1987, 1993; Upton, 1994; Correa, 1994). Notably, Upton builds on Slack's notion of the nature of exibility (Fig. 3) introducing the concept of usage, i.e. Time Horizon, and Uniformity thus: Dimensions the situation for which exibility is required; Time Horizon measured in units of time and categorised as strategic, tactical and op- erational, it is the period or frequency of change, e.g. minute-by-minute, days, weeks, or years; Range element possibly measured as the range of products produced, etc., it is the number of viable positions within the range or metric of operating limits; Uniformity element possibly measured as yield or quality, it is a performance measure re- ecting the ability to operate uniformly at any point in the range; Mobility element possibly measured as cost or time, it is the ability to move within the dimension of change. Correa (1994) introduces system robustness as a type of exibility, i.e. the ability of the system to overcome unplanned change whether originating internally or externally. However, robustness would seem to be better viewed as a characteristic of the aggregated manufacturing system exibility in much the same way as Upton's uniformity is a characteristic of a particular dimension of exi- bility. In summary: it seems clear that manufacturing exibility can be classied variously according to Fig. 3. Flexibility framework, reproduced from Upton (1994). R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 49 how it is perceived (internal, external), and over what time scale it is considered (long term, short term), etc. However, irrespective of the level or perspective from which it is viewed, each type or ``dimension'' of exibility can be divided into a number of smaller elemental characteristics that describe its bounds. Typical of these dimensions is the range of states that can be achieved, the ability to change through the available range and the uniformity of performance across the range of available states. 5. Identication and measurement of exibility A primary objective behind the drive to dene the character and nature of manufacturing exi- bility has often been the desire to measure or quantify the characteristic in some way and as a consequence, the two issues are invariably closely linked. However, opinion remains divided as to whether manufacturing exibility can be measured (Lenz, 1992a) or, in certain circumstances even needs to be (De Groote, 1994). The various research approaches which have been employed to identify and measure exibility can be broadly categorised as either qualitative or quantitative (Brill and Mandelbaum, 1989; Sarker et al., 1994). This categorisation is not mutually exclusive. Van Maanen (1979) suggests the dier- ence is one of ``overall form, focus and emphasis of study''. He also notes that the term ``covers an array of interpretative techniques'' and describes ``doing description'', e.g. case studies and personal interviews, as a ``fundamental act of data collec- tion in a qualitative study''. Qualitative research in the eld of exibility tends to deal with issues in general terms, focusing on concepts such as those related to process tech- nology andbusiness strategy. Examples of this work include Buzacott (1982), Browne et al. (1984) and Slack (1983, 1987) who attempted to identify types of exibility, Gustavsson (1984) and Buzacott and Mandelbaum (1985) who investigated the relation- ship between exibility and productivity, Chatterjee et al. (1984) who presented various production frameworks, and Carter (1986) who presented dif- ferent strategies for increased exibilities. Conversely, quantitative research tends to ad- dress specic manufacturing issues and is usually of an operational nature. Examples of this work are Son and Park (1987) and Nagarur (1992) who developed mathematical models and measures of exibility for many lower order exibility types. In particular, routing exibility and machine exi- bility, which are referred to by Chandra and Tombak (1992) as ``two of the most fundamental types of exibility''. A notable exception to the predominantly operational focus of quantitative research is the earlier work of Mandelbaum (1978). This work uses decision theoretic formu- lation to explore the notion of exibility in the decision making process, thus emphasising ``the role of strategic considerations or attributes in the evaluation of exibility''. A wide range of techniques has been employed developing quantitative measures of exibility. Many of these are theoretical and typically focus on only two or three types of exibility. These include, path analytic modelling (Swamidass and Newell, 1987), petri net modelling (Kochikar and Narendran, 1992), information theoretic (Yao, 1985), decision theoretic (Mandelbaum, 1978; Mandelbaum and Buzacott, 1990), nancial anal- ysis (Chandra and Tombak, 1992; Gupta, 1993), value based (Ramasesh and Jayakumar, 1991), measure theoretic, contingency theoretic (Ger- main, 1989), and empirical data analysis (Dixon, 1992). In their treatise on this subject, Gupta and Goyal (1989) provide numerous examples of both approaches, attributing the apparent diversity to the ``wide array of dimensions, which constitute modern, advanced manufacturing systems''. However, later Gupta (1993) speculates that the cause of ``so many dierent measurement schemes'' and ``lack of universal acceptance of any one scheme'' is the fact that any measurement of exibility must, because of its nature, be user or situation specic. Considering manufacturing exibility at the system level, a further and possibly more useful classication of approaches to research in this area is introduced by Sarker et al. (1994), namely: ag- gregate and attribute. Focussing on the treatment of the subject rather than the techniques used, the two approaches are broadly dened: 50 R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 Aggregate the unication or integration of exibility measures of individual subsystems into a quantication of the manufacturing systems exi- bility; and Attribute the construction of a mea- sure of manufacturing exibility based on parameters selected from a cross section of those functions of the manufacturing system which contribute to exibility. Cited examples of the aggregated approach are: Ramasesh and Jayakumar (1991) (from whom the term is borrowed and whose approach is discussed later), Son and Park (1987) who integrate a num- ber of individual measures of exibility to produce an integrated measure which is expressed in mon- etary terms, and Abdel-Malek and Wolf (1991) whose method of component integration involves the construction of a parameterised average exi- bility which, expressed in non-monetary terms, represents an index of manufacturing exibility. Similarly, Hutchinson and Sinha (1989) are cited as an example of the attribute approach. Focusing on the relationship between uncertainty and exi- bility, the authors use a ``decision theoretic mea- sure'' to arrive at an economic value of exibility, representing uncertainty as the standard deviation of product demand. Several observations can be made from Sarker's evaluation of these two approaches. Concerning the aggregated approach, it is noted that a fun- damental prerequisite is the identication of the relationships between the exibility types; the dif- culty of achieving this has been previously dis- cussed. Measuring exibility in monetary terms as proposed in the integrated measures of Son and Park (1987) and (Ramasesh and Jayakumar, 1991) has an immediate appeal with management and hence has a practical value. Conversely, the at- tribute approach is dependent on the identication of parameters and factors other than exibility types. A variety of approaches, which have been used for identifying these factors, are cited. How- ever, many are of a theoretical nature and hence of questionable value in real world applications. Exceptions are: Lim (1987) whose use of an or- ganisational survey attempted to identify how management dened exibility; Gerwin (1987) who proposed the use of a methodology for sys- tematically identifying factors based on their use to counter uncertainty; and, the factor analysis approach adopted by Gupta and Somers (1992). In the attempt by Gupta and Somers to develop an ``instrument for measuring and analysing manufacturing exibility'', 34 items aecting manufacturing exibility were identied from the literature and a preliminary instrument created to measure them, e.g. ``Time required to introduce new products'', ``Time required to add a unit of production capacity'', ``Number of new parts introduced per year'', etc. The results of a survey of 269 companies were manipulated using factor- analysis techniques to create a construct of 9 principal types of exibility based on 21 lower order items: volume, programming, process, product and production, market, machine, rout- ing, material handling, expansion and market. The construct, which is built on the taxonomy pro- posed by Sethi and Sethi (1990), was tested on a further 113 companies and was found to exhibit ``adequate reliability and validity''. Ramasesh and Jayakumar (1991) refer to the notion of aggregated exibility as ``the joint eect of all types of exibilities that exist in the manu- facturing system under consideration''. The ratio- nale for considering the measurement of exibility at this level is the unsuitability of lower order measurements of exibility in the strategic decision making process. The lower order measures are seen as ``on the whole non-nancial'', ``local measures which look at one or a few dimensions and ignore possible interactions and trade-os which may exist between the dierent exibility types'', and ``the measurements are isolated in that they are derived independently of the manufac- turing environment''. The quantitative model which is subsequently developed is constructed around the view that a value of exibility could be used as a surrogate measure (Gupta and Buzacott, 1989) and that a stochastic mathematical programming model could be used to measure objects of managerial control (Jaikumar, 1984). The resulting model uses machine, material, labour and volume exibility to construct an aggregated exibility. The resulting measure, involving the distribution of the net revenues of the exibility measure is said, ``pre- sents performance-related benets of decisions R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 51 concerning the exibility aspects of a manufac- turing system''. That the perspective of the research conducted to date has had a signicant bearing on the de- velopment of so many disparate measures of ex- ibility there can be little doubt. However, an equally signicant factor must be the absence of an agreement on the purpose of measuring exibility, e.g. to compare the eectiveness of alternative types of technology, to measure the operational performance of a cell or manufacturing facility, or to assess the feasibility of developing particular business strategies. Another reason perhaps, is the absence of any agreement on the constituent types of exibility. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that several important facilitators/enablers of manufacturing exibility have been consistently ignored in the manufacturing literature specical- ly, labour (Chen et al., 1992) and information technology. (Ramasesh and Jayakumar (1991) provide a review of exibility types and suggested measures. However, in spite of listing four types of labour exibility, variously attributed to Atkinson (1985) and Kozan (1982) no measurements are proposed. Furthermore, the preoccupation of earlier surveys with the taxonomy of Browne et al. (1984) has meant that labour exibility and its measurement has been ignored in key papers such as Gupta and Goyal (1989) and Sethi and Sethi (1990). Information technology, whilst acknowl- edged as an important facilitator of manufacturing exibility by Sethi and Sethi (1990) is similarly ignored. A possible reason for this is that facili- tators, like machine tools, labour and information technology, are thought to contribute to a system's exibility by performing their function properly and are therefore seen as enablers of exibility rather than types. In summary: without an agreement on issues such as what the constituent elements of manu- facturing exibility are, the eects of the interre- lationships which exist between them and the extent of the role of the enablers in achieving exibility, research into the measurement of exi- bility, when viewed at the system level, is likely to continue to appear inconsistent and confusing. Nonetheless, the importance of being able to ac- count for existing degrees of exibility when making strategic and operational decisions is clearly evident. 6. Consolidation framework The use of frameworks to illustrate complex management constructs and assist with the devel- opment of theoretical concepts, that would otherwise be dicult to visualise, is a technique that will be familiar to operations management researchers. The framework proposed by Correa (1994), shown in Fig. 1 and discussed earlier, illustrates the inuence of the unplanned component of en- vironmental uncertainty or stimulus on the man- ufacturing system. Of particular interest is the concept that stimuli can be translated, at the sys- tem level, into types of change which can be fur- ther dened in terms of lower order ``dimensions'' or attributes, each requiring a particular manage- rial response. As previously noted, because of the focus of Correa's work, i.e. on managerial activities, man- ufacturing exibility is presented in this framework from a largely operational perspective. As a con- sequence, it only represents a partial view of manufacturing exibility, i.e. it ignores the use of exibility as an integral element of a proactive manufacturing strategy. Manufacturing exibility can not only be used to inuence the sources of environmental uncertainty, and thereby reduce the eects which must be accommodated, it can be used to create competitive advantage, e.g. by in- creasing the competitor's level of uncertainty (Hyun and Ahn, 1992; Gerwin, 1993). The use of manufacturing exibility as a com- ponent in a proactive or reactive manufacturing strategy is illustrated in Gerwin's conceptual framework (Fig. 4). Within the context of this framework, the work of Correa can be clearly positioned within the Manufacturing Strategy and Required Manufacturing Flexibility entities. However, in view of the observations made in preceding sections regarding the diering mani- festations of uncertainty when viewed strategically or operationally, two additional entities would be necessary if the framework was to represent both 52 R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 perspectives. The rst, Operational Management Control, to reect the controlling inuence of management on the magnitude of the exibility requirement, the second, Business Strategy, to re- ect the acknowledged relationship between the business environment, business strategy formula- tion, and the manufacturing strategy. A number of taxonomies of exibility types have been examined which, on the whole, are do- main specic. Foremost amongst these is the work of Sethi and Sethi (1990) whose taxonomy builds on the earlier work of Browne et al. (1984) and organises the exibility types in a hierarchical structure which reects the dierent operational levels of the manufacturing system. In addition, the taxonomy attempts to dene the linkages be- tween the exibility types at each operational level. Intuitively, the framework of Sethi and Sethi (Fig. 2) can be seen to be represented in the Re- quired Manufacturing Flexibility entity of Gerwin's conceptual framework (Fig. 4) whilst the facilita- tors of exibility, labour, information technology, process technology and organisational structures, etc. can be seen to be represented by the Methods for Delivering Flexibility entity. Clearly, if a framework could be constructed using these conceptual building blocks, each il- lustrating a particular aspect of manufacturing exibility, this assembled framework would pro- vide a superstructure around which the observa- tions from preceding sections could be incorporated. Such a framework could also be viewed as a consolidation of contemporary man- ufacturing exibility research and hence a means of identifying additional research priorities. Fig. 5 is an attempt at one such representation. Given the current lack of agreement concerning the constituent elements of manufacturing exi- bility, a consolidation framework could incorpo- rate a number of taxonomies. However, in practice, the exact construct is less important than the ability of management to articulate require- ments, clearly and rationally. Therefore, the point of special interest in the framework proposed by Sethi and Sethi, and the reason for its inclusion here, is the emphasis placed on the linkages be- tween the exibility types at each operational level. However, in order that this is given appropriate prominence in the consolidation framework, Ger- win's broadly named, Required Manufacturing Flexibility entity would have to be deconstructed into its system and operational components. A Required System Flexibility entity is thus intro- duced immediately after the Manufacturing Strat- egy entity to reect the strategic focus and content of this entity's output. Similarly, a Required Op- erational Flexibility entity is introduced between the Operational Management Control and the Methods for Delivering Flexibility entities to reect the management action and control focus of this element of the framework. Both Slack (1983, 1987) and Upton (1994) provide an informative perspective on the ele- mental attributes of exibility types. Upton's framework (Fig. 3) is selected for special treatment here because it appears to have successfully ac- Fig. 4. Conceptual framework, reproduced from Gerwin (1993). R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 53 counted for both Slack's range and response at- tributes, and in addition incorporated a later ob- servation that managers view response as short term, and range as long term exibility issues. Upton's time horizons are dened as operational, tactical and strategic, and can therefore be applied to exibility types represented at both strategic and operational levels in the consolidation frame- work, i.e. the Required System Flexibility and Re- quired Operational Flexibility entities of Fig. 5. The inclusion of a Performance Measurement entity, between the Methods for Delivering Flexi- bility and the Operational Management Control entities, is an acknowledgement of the role of performance measurements in monitoring and maintaining eective policies with regard to the deployment of an organisation's operational ex- ibility. Similarly, a second such entity between the Manufacturing Strategy and Business Strategy entities emphasises the dierent requirements of the strategic and operational perspectives repre- sented in the consolidation framework; a point not always made clear in the literature and which is frequently the causes of some confusion. 7. Concluding remarks Historically, research into manufacturing exi- bility has been fragmented, each work focusing on a specic aspect of this complex subject. As a consequence, understanding of the implications of Fig. 5. Consolidation framework. 54 R. Beach et al. / European Journal of Operational Research 122 (2000) 4157 acquiring and using manufacturing exibility has also been evolutionary and fragmented. However, sucient pieces of the jigsaw are now in place to construction a framework that draws together and encapsulates the many strands of this multifarious subject. The framework illustrated in Fig. 5 is an attempt at constructing a consolidation frame- work that, in addition to emphasising the extent of contemporary understanding of the subject, also highlights those areas requiring further work. There is a growing body of literature on the strategic uses of manufacturing exibility to achieve competitive advantage. However, more research is required before this work can be fully integrated in a conceptual framework that extends beyond the boundaries of the manufacturing strategy. Specically, whilst the relationship be- tween business and manufacturing strategy for- mulation is fairly well understood, more needs to be known about a number of issues including the inuence of corporate culture on the choice of strategy adopted and which manifestation of manufacturing exibility best suits a particular business environment. Considerable eort has been directed at the operational aspects of exibility without much attention being given to the methods of delivery. Much more needs to be known about the contri- bution key enablers, such as information technol- ogy, process technology and labour/skills and competencies, make towards the acquisition of manufacturing exibility. A large research eort has been expended de- veloping measurements of exibility, and whilst this has made a signicant contribution to the understanding of the subject, like the work di- rected at developing a taxonomy of exibility types, it is discordant and in part, largely theo- retical. A practical performance measure is un- likely to emerge unless the purpose of the measurement is rst agreed. Referring to the con- solidation framework illustrated in Fig. 5, this might best be achieved by considering the needs of the user at both the strategic and operational level. Little is known about the interrelationship which exists between the various exibility types and the trade-os which will be necessary if an enterprise's manufacturing exibility is to be aligned with the environmental conditions in which it operates. 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