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The concept of flexibility has attracted considerable interest in the last 25 years in the context of manufacturing. This paper develops a framework for thinking about flexibility in the context of making decisions about the design and operation of systems in either manufacturing or service environments. Three different aspects of flexibility are defined: prior flexibility, state flexibility and action flexibility, and the issues in the measurement of flexibility are discussed. The use of flexibility ideas by industry in manufacturing and services is reviewed and key contributions to the academic literature are summarized. Major issues and insights arising from a focus on flexibility are discussed. The paper concludes with some challenges for future research.

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Nonhomogeneous, Geometric distribution, Queueing, Birth-and-death processes, 60E05, 60K25, 90B22,