IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jomega/v37y2009i4p746-756.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Flexibility configurations: Empirical analysis of volume and product mix flexibility

Author

Listed:
  • Hallgren, Mattias
  • Olhager, Jan

Abstract

In this paper we address flexibility and investigate the relationship between volume and product mix flexibility. One view of flexibility is that of being a capability in itself; another view is that of flexibility as an enabler, providing the manufacturing system with properties on which other competitive capabilities are built. In this research, the latter view of flexibility is used, where flexibility acts as a second order competitive criterion. The aim is to differentiate between two dimensions of flexibility important to the manufacturing value chain, i.e., volume and product mix flexibility, and to investigate how different flexibility configurations are related to various manufacturing practices. A clustering research approach is used to identify groups of companies based on flexibility configurations. The groups are then analyzed with respect to characteristics and impact on operational performance. For the empirical investigation, we use empirical data from the high performance manufacturing (HPM) study, including three industries and seven countries--a total of 211 plants. We find that flexibility configurations based on high or low levels of volume and mix flexibility combinations show significant differences both in terms of operational performance, and in terms of emphasis put into different flexibility source factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Hallgren, Mattias & Olhager, Jan, 2009. "Flexibility configurations: Empirical analysis of volume and product mix flexibility," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 746-756, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jomega:v:37:y:2009:i:4:p:746-756
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305-0483(08)00087-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Boyer, Kenneth K. & Leong, G. Keong, 1996. "Manufacturing flexibility at the plant level," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 495-510, October.
    2. Dawn Barnes-Schuster & Yehuda Bassok & Ravi Anupindi, 2002. "Coordination and Flexibility in Supply Contracts with Options," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 4(3), pages 171-207, May.
    3. Gong, Zhejun & Hu, Sun, 2008. "An economic evaluation model of product mix flexibility," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 852-864, October.
    4. Fernando F. Suarez & Michael A. Cusumano & Charles H. Fine, 1996. "An Empirical Study of Manufacturing Flexibility in Printed Circuit Board Assembly," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 44(1), pages 223-240, February.
    5. Paul M. Swamidass & William T. Newell, 1987. "Manufacturing Strategy, Environmental Uncertainty and Performance: A Path Analytic Model," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(4), pages 509-524, April.
    6. Olhager, Jan, 1993. "Manufacturing flexibility and profitability," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 67-78, July.
    7. Bengtsson, Jens & Olhager, Jan, 2002. "The impact of the product mix on the value of flexibility," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 265-273, August.
    8. Chandra, Charu & Everson, Mark & Grabis, Janis, 2005. "Evaluation of enterprise-level benefits of manufacturing flexibility," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 17-31, February.
    9. Bengtsson, Jens & Olhager, Jan, 2002. "Valuation of product-mix flexibility using real options," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 13-28, July.
    10. Grubbstrom, Robert W. & Olhager, Jan, 1997. "Productivity and flexibility: Fundamental relations between two major properties and performance measures of the production system," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1-2), pages 73-82, October.
    11. Paul S. Adler & Barbara Goldoftas & David I. Levine, 1999. "Flexibility Versus Efficiency? A Case Study of Model Changeovers in the Toyota Production System," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 10(1), pages 43-68, February.
    12. Donald Gerwin, 1993. "Manufacturing Flexibility: A Strategic Perspective," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(4), pages 395-410, April.
    13. Gupta, Yash P. & Goyal, Sameer, 1989. "Flexibility of manufacturing systems: Concepts and measurements," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 119-135, November.
    14. Sunder Kekre & Kannan Srinivasan, 1990. "Broader Product Line: A Necessity to Achieve Success?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(10), pages 1216-1232, October.
    15. Dreyer, Bent & Gronhaug, Kjell, 2004. "Uncertainty, flexibility, and sustained competitive advantage," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 57(5), pages 484-494, May.
    16. Chen, IJ & Calantone, RJ & Chung, C-H, 1992. "The marketing-manufacturing interface and manufacturing flexibility," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 431-443, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Corsten, Hans & Gossinger, Ralf, 2006. "Output flexibility of service enterprises -- an analysis based on production theory," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 296-307, December.
    2. Braglia, Marcello & Petroni, Alberto, 2000. "Towards a taxonomy of search patterns of manufacturing flexibility in small and medium-sized firms," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 195-213, April.
    3. Gong, Zhejun & Hu, Sun, 2008. "An economic evaluation model of product mix flexibility," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 852-864, October.
    4. Seebacher, Gottfried & Winkler, Herwig, 2014. "Evaluating flexibility in discrete manufacturing based on performance and efficiency," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 340-351.
    5. Thomé, Antonio Márcio T. & Scavarda, Luiz Felipe & Pires, Sílvio R.I. & Ceryno, Paula & Klingebiel, Katja, 2014. "A multi-tier study on supply chain flexibility in the automotive industry," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 91-105.
    6. Chang, Shih-Chia & Yang, Chen-Lung & Cheng, Hsin-Chia & Sheu, Chwen, 2003. "Manufacturing flexibility and business strategy: An empirical study of small and medium sized firms," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 13-26, January.
    7. Hasuike, Takashi & Ishii, Hiroaki, 2009. "On flexible product-mix decision problems under randomness and fuzziness," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 770-787, August.
    8. Yu, Kangkang & Cadeaux, Jack & Luo, Ben Nanfeng, 2015. "Operational flexibility: Review and meta-analysis," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 190-202.
    9. Marta Pérez Pérez & Ana María Serrano Bedia & María Concepción López Fernández, 2016. "A review of manufacturing flexibility: systematising the concept," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(10), pages 3133-3148, May.
    10. Beach, R. & Muhlemann, A. P. & Price, D. H. R. & Paterson, A. & Sharp, J. A., 2000. "A review of manufacturing flexibility," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 41-57, April.
    11. Dipankar Bose & A. K. Chatterjee & Samir Barman, 2016. "Towards dominant flexibility configurations in strategic capacity planning under demand uncertainty," OPSEARCH, Springer;Operational Research Society of India, vol. 53(3), pages 604-619, September.
    12. Chandra, Charu & Everson, Mark & Grabis, Janis, 2005. "Evaluation of enterprise-level benefits of manufacturing flexibility," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 17-31, February.
    13. Jörg Claussen & Christian Essling & Christian Peukert, 2018. "Demand variation, strategic flexibility and market entry: Evidence from the U.S. airline industry," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(11), pages 2877-2898, November.
    14. Moshfique Uddin & Anup Chowdhury & Geoffrey Wood, 2022. "The resilience of the British and European goods industry: Challenge of Brexit," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 31(4), pages 934-954.
    15. Francas, David & Löhndorf, Nils & Minner, Stefan, 2011. "Machine and labor flexibility in manufacturing networks," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 165-174, May.
    16. Bengtsson, Jens & Olhager, Jan, 2002. "The impact of the product mix on the value of flexibility," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 265-273, August.
    17. Borenstein, Denis, 2000. "A directed acyclic graph representation of routing manufacturing flexibility," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 127(1), pages 78-93, November.
    18. Elena Katok & William Tarantino & Terry P. Harrison, 2003. "Investment in production resource flexibility: An empirical investigation of methods for planning under uncertainty," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(2), pages 105-129, March.
    19. Allam Yousuf & Hossam Haddad & Miklos Pakurar & Serhii Kozlovskyi & Anastasiia Mohylova & Oksana Shlapak & Felfoldi Janos, 2019. "The Effect of Operational Flexibility on Performance: A Field Study on Small and Medium-sized Industrial Companies in Jordan," Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Economic Laboratory for Transition Research (ELIT), vol. 15(1), pages 47-60.
    20. Merschmann, Ulf & Thonemann, Ulrich W., 2011. "Supply chain flexibility, uncertainty and firm performance: An empirical analysis of German manufacturing firms," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 43-53, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jomega:v:37:y:2009:i:4:p:746-756. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/375/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.