An approach to the measurement of single-machine flexibility

Flexibility of manufacturing systems has been recognized as one of the vita l competitive priorities in manufacturing strategy. However, the meaning an d implementation of flexibility remain blurred. The main reason could be th at the attributes of manufacturing system flexibility are many and complica ted. This research suggests that there are at least two factors that should be considered-namely, efficiency and versatility-in the measurement of man ufacturing flexibility. The entropy approach, which was extended from infor mation theory and has been applied comprehensively in the research of marke t diversity in the economics field, has its limitations in the measurement of manufacturing flexibility. It depicts only the factor of versatility, an d not that of efficiency. This research proposes a combination of the entro py approach and the efficiency frontier approach, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), for the measurement of manufacturing flexibility. This approach has been applied to the measurement of single machine flexibility and a straig htforward example is exhibited in this research.