Title: Designing for manufacturing flexibility: a newsvendor approach

Authors: Layek L. Abdel-Malek, Nathapol Areeratchakul, Mojisola K. Otegbeye

Addresses: Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102, USA. ' Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102, USA, ' Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102, USA

Abstract: With today|s fast paced technology advancement, flexibility has emerged as a strategic imperative for the viability of business enterprises. Central to the success of any flexibility initiative, is the prudent design and selection of production systems to meet the needs of a concern in an uncertain environment. In this paper, we extend the newsvendor problem to optimise the selection of equipments for different flexibility classes and present a numerical example to show the application of the developed model. Though geared towards manufacturing, the model can be extended to other areas such as that of supply chain flexibility.

Keywords: manufacturing flexibility; newsvendor problem; optimal flexibility levels; flexible manufacturing; equipment selection; supply chain flexibility; supply chain management; SCM; manufacturing systems design; healthcare systems design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2006.009057

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2006 Vol.1 No.1/2, pp.201 - 220

Published online: 21 Feb 2006 *

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