The marketing-manufacturing interface and manufacturing flexibility

Chen, I. J.; Calantone, Roger J.; Chung, Chen H.

doi:10.1016/0305-0483(92)90018-3

Cited by 103 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Although numerous dimensions of manufacturing flexibility have been defined, the work concerning product mix flexibility specifically relates to Ž . this research Chen et al, 1992;Gerwin, 1993 . Here product mix flexibility is defined as the capability of producing a number of product lines andror numer-Ž .…”

Section: Product Variety-a Strategic Issuementioning

confidence: 86%

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Manufacturing flexibility: methods for measuring the impact of product variety on performance in process industries

Berry

Cooper

1998

J of Ops Management

121

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Product variety is often assumed to yield competitive advantage by offering products or services tailored to specific market segments. This strategy should result in more total sales volume or higher prices, and presumed profit, gained by meeting more specialized demands. However, achieving competitive advantage through increased product variety is heavily dependent on the proper alignment of the marketing and manufacturing strategies. This paper shows that adding product variety can have adverse cost and margin implications when marketing and manufacturing strategies are mis-aligned. The critical strategic issues involve product pricing and manufacturing flexibility in product mix. We report methods that can be used to measure product mix flexibility and manufacturing performance in terms of costs and margins based on actual orders and production data. Such methods provide a means of empirically diagnosing the degree of strategic mis-match using actual operating data. These methods are general in nature, and have been tested in field research on high volume batch processes that are representative of many firms in process industries. The results show that gaining competitive advantage through increased product variety requires a clear understanding of the process choice required to support the contemplated range of product volumes, and the cost and profitability trade-offs involved. q

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Section: Product Variety-a Strategic Issuementioning

confidence: 86%

“…This company was selected because it provided an opportunity to conduct this research in a different type of industry than the metalworking and assembly manufacturing firms studied in previous Ž research Ramasesh and Jayakumar, 1991;Chen et . al., 1992;Goldhar and Lei, 1995 . …”

Section: Field Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manufacturing flexibility: methods for measuring the impact of product variety on performance in process industries

Berry

Cooper

1998

J of Ops Management

121

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“…This conception is supported by the evidence that environmental uncertainty generates needs for flexibility and this induces developments in technology (Chen, 1992). As a consequence, this tends to increase the range of processes attended by flexible systems due to the breaking up of technological restrictions, accomplished by innovation.…”

Section: Flexibility and Competitivenessmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Among the options of automatic production, FMCs are the best adapted to the differentiation needs and recent technological advances are making FMC economically viable for many traditional processes (Chen, 1992). Its characteristics, if properly applied, allow fast adaptation to market conditions and possibility of gradual and modular implementation.…”

Section: Technological Aspects: Flexible Design and Manufacturingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Product differentiation and process flexibility as base for competitive strategy

Lepikson

1995

Balanced Automation Systems

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One of the key problems faced by the companies nowadays is the management of their competitive positions is an increasingly more complex environment. This paper places a discussion in the strategic position of the companies and analyses the consequences originating from this position, mainly the imposed need to conciliate two conflicting elements of one manufacturing company: the profusion of new and differentiated products, in detriment of manufacturing economy, which demands large batches and slight changes in its planning in order to get the best performance. After a brief context analysis, an approach to this conciliation is evaluated, based on flexible product design and manufacturing, oriented by technological patterns and organizational culture to achieve this goal.

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“…Alternatively, Chen et al (1992), Gerwin (1993) and Das (1996) named it re-routing flexibility, considering the number of viable routes as its main feature. Literature on the subject matter is rather extensive and one of the first attempts to measure routing flexibility can be found in the work by Browne et.…”

Section: Routing Flexibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A measurement method of routing flexibility in manufacturing systems

Zammori¹,

Braglia²,

Frosolini³

2011

IJIEC

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This paper focuses on routing flexibility, which is the ability to manufacture a part type via several routes and/or to perform different operations on more than one machine. Specifically, the paper presents a comprehensive method for the measurement of routing flexibility, in a generic manufacturing system. The problem is approached in a modular way, starting from a basic set of flexibility indexes. These are progressively extended to include more comprehensive and complex routing attributes, such as: the average efficiency, the range and the homogeneous distribution of the alternative routes. Two procedures are finally proposed to compare manufacturing systems in terms of routing flexibility. The first one uses a vectorial representation of the previously defined indexes and the second one is based on data envelopment analysis, a multi-criteria decision making approach. The paper concludes with a numerical example, supported by discrete event simulation, which validates the proposed approach.

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The marketing-manufacturing interface and manufacturing flexibility

Cited by 103 publications

References 27 publications

Manufacturing flexibility: methods for measuring the impact of product variety on performance in process industries

Manufacturing flexibility: methods for measuring the impact of product variety on performance in process industries

Product differentiation and process flexibility as base for competitive strategy

A measurement method of routing flexibility in manufacturing systems

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