(A) study on a general framework for managing manufacturing felxibility

Abstract

The objective of the thesis is to provide a comprehensive and practical management framework of manufacturing flexibility from the manufacturing system managers`` viewpoint. The framework links understanding of environmental changes with implementation and improvement of manufacturing flexibility. In the first part of the framework, three aspects of environmental changes, type, range, and time, are analyzed respectively. At first, type is used to give definitions and classification of manufacturing flexibility. Type of environmental changes determines the corresponding type of flexibility. Each type of flexibility is defined and classified into some categories. Secondly, combined with a decision hierarchical and system hierarchical perspective, time aspect is incorporated into the analysis. It is used to determine the level to manage the environmental changes under consideration. The next step of the analysis is to check the range aspect of environmental changes. For that purpose, two new concepts, coverage and partial range, are introduced. After the analysis of environmental changes, two important actions are followed. One is to provide clear operating policy to cope with the changes. In other words, the ways to adapt the manufacturing system to the environmental change considered are investigated. In order to do this, the new concept, flexibility cost, is proposed. It means a cost for adapting to the given environmental changes in a time period. It also implies an incremental cost for system changes caused by environmental changes. Uniformity cost, mobility cost and opportunity cost of lost production constitute flexibility cost. On the practical basis, it help provide an economic procedure to cope with environmental changes. The other action is to seek for the way of improving manufacturing flexibility. Since environment changes continuously, every manufacturing system is required to be flexible to some extent in a certain situation. Therefore it is very ...