Conceptualizing sources, key concerns and critical factors for manufacturing flexibility adoption

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors influencing manufacturing flexibility adoption and simultaneously explores some of the key issues prevailing in manufacturing flexibility adoption in Indian context. The study also stratifies critical factors for successful manufacturing flexibility adoption. Design/methodology/approach – Using exploratory sequential design, a series of focus group interviews were conducted with Indian manufacturing professionals and these interviews were supplemented by 127 follow-up structured questionnaires. Findings – Two major themes emerged from the first phase of the study – role played by some of the unexplored antecedents of manufacturing flexibility and key issues in manufacturing flexibility adoption. In the second phase, a list of factors was categorized based on their degree of importance in manufacturing flexibility adoption. Research limitations/implications – Being qualitative in nature, the study suffers from inherent risk of subjectivity associated with manufacturing practitioners. A large-scale survey and rigorous quantitative analysis would be helpful to further validate the list of factors and underlying relationships among proposed factors. Practical implications – The identified list of factors and some of the key issues in manufacturing flexibility adoption can be of great help to practitioners. The stratified list of factors can be further used by academicians to develop an instrument for manufacturing flexibility adoption. Originality/value – The paper identifies a set of factors that affects manufacturing flexibility adoption. It offers a basis for instrument development for manufacturing flexibility adoption and provides direction for future quantitative research in manufacturing flexibility area.

Role of Ergonomic Factors Affecting Production of Leather Garment-Based SMEs of India: Implications for Social Sustainability

“…Although most of the industries in India are desperate to increase their production rate, they are reluctant to make technological changes [29,30]. On investigation, it was identified that most of the manufacturing units in India are small and medium industries (SMEs), which have inadequate financial support.…”

Análise das dimensões de flexibilidade de manufatura para a prevenção de problemas em uma indústria de pneus

“…Como resultado de sua natureza multidimensional, a flexibilidade não é genérica e deve ser cuidadosamente justificada, planejada e gerida, de forma a ser bem sucedida na sua implementação e gerar os resultados esperados (BEACH et al, 2000). Sua implementação não demanda, necessariamente, requisitos tecnológicos (MISHRA et al, 2016).…”

Empirical analysis of enablers and performance outcome of manufacturing flexibility in an emerging economy

“…First, the study does a confirmatory study by applying a covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM) to test and verify the enablers of volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility. Thus, the use of SEM adopts a confirmatory rather than an exploratory approach to test and confirm multivariate causal relationships between enablers and flexibilities; second, unlike previous studies (Mishra et al , 2016), this study expands manufacturing flexibility into volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility rather than considering these flexibilities as a composite manufacturing flexibility latent constructs; thus this study empirically tests and verifies the enablers of volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility in firms; third, in addition to empirically investigating the enablers of volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility, this study measures the influence of these flexibilities on operational performance. This helps in avoiding the drawbacks associated with prior studies (Perez-Perez et al , 2018), which have primarily focused on financial measures; fourth, unlike the majority of earlier studies where the focus was on advanced economies (Mishra et al , 2014), the study indicates the importance of volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility across industries in India.…”