The role of manufacturing flexibility strategy on product platform development

Manufacturing flexibility is defined here as the variety in product mix and volume that can be produced by a manufacturing plant. Several firms have adopted an approach of using common product design elements to achieve higher levels of manufacturing flexibility. In this paper, we explore how different manufacturing flexibility strategies interact with product platform development activities to affect the magnitude of platform usage among diverse products, through a comprehensive discrete optimisation based decision model that addresses the simultaneous determination of product mix offering, product platform development and product assignments to plants in a discrete modular manufacturing environment. We found that, under the totally flexible plant strategy, product platforms tend to support more products to offer than the integrated with product assignment decision. On the other hand, the totally flexible plant strategy offers significantly fewer products to offer than the integrated with product assignment decision. We also found that the degree of platform usage increases as the setup cost for assembly at plants increases. However, the degree of platform usage increases when the unit cost of product platform decreases.