Developing flexibility in assembly environments

Abstract

Manufacturing flexibility has been a topic of interest for both researchers and practitioners for several decades. Despite the amount of attention that flexibility receives, it remains a nebulous concept to those in industry trying to develop flexibility within their firms. This thesis attempts to act as a guide to practitioners, bridging the gap between the idealistic academic literature and the pragmatic concerns that are encountered when actually implementing flexibility projects. It is very difficult to develop recommendations for the implementation of flexibility projects from outside of an organization. Therefore this thesis introduces two separate flexibility implementation case studies that were performed while the author was employed by the firm in the case study. Through offering this unique perspective, it becomes apparent that without knowing the cultural and political climate of the firm, poor recommendations can be made. Often implementation failure can be traced back to this root cause. Flexibility is often thought of as a manufacturing problem. While flexibility is an important tool in combating increased uncertainty and variability within the manufacturing environment, there is great opportunity to utilize flexibility in other environments as well.

(cont.) In particular flexibility can be a key source of competitive advantage if properly applied to the launch of new products. Typically most organizations divide the manufacturing and design functions through organizational boundaries resulting in vastly disparate entities. Therefore increased focus around the hand-off between these two functions, particularly with respect to flexibility can provide significant opportunities.