A STUDY ON THE MEASUREMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE FLEXIBILITY IN MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

Several evaluation methods with various types of flexibility have been developed over the years to evaluate various manufacturing systems. H owever, it is not easy to use them to evaluate the flexibility of manu facturing systems because of three limitations: 1) ambiguous definitio ns of flexibility, 2) interdependence among various types of flexibili ty, and 3) mixed use of available and realized flexibility. This paper proposes a new concept of flexibility called comprehensive flexibilit y. Then it is quantified; it is an integrated performance measure whic h covers various types of flexibility in manufacturing systems. A case example is presented to illustrate the process of quantifying the pro posed measure and interpret the meaning of the measure. (C) 1998 Elsev ier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.