Reference no: EM132260449

Summarize and critically reflect on the research pertaining to your topic. After the task is completed, you should discover your source materials are accessible and organized and ready to be incorporated into your Career Development Research Paper.

Capacity Flexibility can be defined as the ability to ensure reversible economic capacity adjustments in a manufacturing system. In other words, it is the ability to increase or decrease the production levels according to requirement.

Time, scope and cost are the three dimensions that impact the capacity flexibility. Effect of each dimension is explained below.

(a) Time- Temporal effect arises during a change process in the manufacturing systems. It is first created by identifying the need for action, and then by applying flexibility measures. The reaction time is the sum of time taken for perceiving,recognizing and identifying the problem while the adaption time is the time needed to determine the required flexibility demand and making solution oriented adjustments in the manufacturing systems. Together they make the time component.

(b) Scope - The capacity flexibility depends upon the scope of action which can be smaller or larger, depending upon the technical and organizational resources and their adaptability to the changes. These resources may be in form of production systems, human resources and the flexibility is defined by their characterstics and response to the changes.

(c) Cost - It is another important factor that affects capacity flexibility. To increase the capacity flexibility of manufacturing systems, the cost effective and fast implementation of flexibility measures is necessary. The "flexibility cost" depends upon the material, labour and equipment costs and should be optimized and weighed against benefits of flexibility.