David
M. Upton
Journal
of Operations Management, No. 12, 1995
Summary
Improvement in
flexibility is a key point of achieving achievements in competition in
manufacturing, but at the same time the vagueness of the term determined at the
same time its weakness. Flexibility can be distinguished among the internal
capability of being flexible (capability)
or the extern competitive need (mobility,
Uton,1994). Another form of flexibility and be expressed by the ability of
producing a wide range of products. Flexibility
in academic is often relevant in the literature to four primary sources:
economics, decision science, competitive strategy and manufacturing management.
Different definitions have been taken, the author uses the following definition
“flexibility as the ability to change
with little penalty in time, effort, cost or time” and therefore he
investigates the ability to change the product being manufactured, analysing in
deep the context of mobility. The author visited 52 plants in North-America in
the uncoated fine paper industry in 2 years, it’s an industry characterized by
a growing need of flexible operations and often not able to achieve JIT, ending
up with inventory and loosing money. The author interviews Vice-Presidents for
Operations, COO, plant managers, paper machine superintendents and operators.
The kind of industry is a typical low-cost product, where a plant has to hold a
competitive price, the plants no able to remain competitive in cost have to be
forced to stay busy since they have to balance pulp flow and continue to add
value in the plant, so that flexibility appears to be an extreme point for a
small and middle companies to survive. Changeover in this kind of production is
also not easy to do complexity in operation, so that the goal is to perform
change as swiftly as possible, a different degree of automation can be observed among companies and even operator may
view it as a slowing and inflexible factor. Time to change grade on a machine
appear then affected by: Plant Operations policies, Plant structure, Plant
infrastructure and Managerial Emphasis. Plant operations policy is
characterized by dimension of change (in colour, furnish, basis weight and
calibre), magnitude (the time to effect change increases with the magnitude of
the change, this is why often in the market production cycles are running on a two-week
basis) and change frequency (plants which make frequent changes might be
expected to make faster grade changes). The Plant structure is characterize on
scale (increasing scale results in greater mechanical inertia of the
components, and pressure that operator may impose themselves to change quickly
may increase the cost of losing production on a big plant) and technology
vintage (older low level technology may inhibit the ability of the plants
operator to change). The plant infrastructure is characterized by computer
integration (this may provide greater integration)and workforce experience (low
levels increase time to change). Under the managerial point of view,
flexibility appears to be a cultural background of the company and managerial
approach.
Key Concepts
Flexibility
Key Results
It is clear that, in case of
non-fully-automated processes, it is not possible to engineer a flexible
approach, but relations between factors can be cleared and levels can be
defined according on the market situation. The author, carrying different
measurements to verify the factory describes above has shown different aspects
for faster and older machines result in faster basis weight changes, while
automation carried on general and repetitive task does not push the system to
changes. Interesting is that each extra year of crew service is associated with
four extra minutes taken to change grade, the crew experience causes
inflexibility, but it is not related with any physical impediment due to age.
Also interesting is that quick change overs are characterized with smaller
change times. In the end it appears that a clear understanding of capability of
flexibility is needed to fully access the tools of flexibility
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