Flexibility (engineering) - Flexible Manufacturing System

Flexible Manufacturing System

Flexibility has been especially thoroughly studied for manufacturing systems. For manufacturing science eleven different classes of flexibility have been identified, :

• Machine flexibility - The different operation types that a machine can perform.

• Material handling flexibility - The ability to move the products within a manufacturing facility.

• Operation flexibility - The ability to produce a product in different ways.

• Process flexibility - The set of products that the system can produce.

• Product flexibility - The ability to add new products in the system.

• Routing flexibility - The different routes (through machines and workshops) that can be used to produce a product in the system.

• Volume flexibility - The ease to profitably increase or decrease the output of an existing system.

• Expansion flexibility - The ability to build out the capacity of a system.

• Program flexibility - The ability to run a system automatically.

• Production flexibility - The number of products a system currently can produce.

• Market flexibility - The ability of the system to adapt to market demands.

These definitions yield under current conditions of the system and that no major setups are conducted or investments are made (except expansion flexibility). Many of the flexibility types are linked to each other; increasing one flexibility type also increases another. But in some cases tradeoffs between two flexibility types are needed.