Methodology for Flexibility Measurement in Semi-automatic Production

Abstract

Demands on production systems are changing constantly as a result of changing competitive conditions and are also closely linked to the performance goals of time, quality, costs and innovation ability. This results in an ever increasing selection between various competitors, with the most important selection criteria being customer individualization, an increasingly shorter product life cycle and new technological innovations. This situation creates an existential need for production companies to manage to adapt over time to the changed surrounding conditions and plan their resources in a way that makes them suitable for cost-effective and market-oriented manufacturing. The following article presents the computerized methodology of an innovative evaluation technique called ecoFLEX which allows the measurement of a production system’s flexibility. At first the paper details the general concept for estimating production flexibility and the approach to concretely calculating the flexibility on different production levels. Furthermore, it presents the practical experience gained in ecoFLEX during its application at a small and medium enterprise (SME) to evaluate the complex manufacturing coherencies from the perspective of their efficiency. Especially it will be shown how the usage of flexibility indices calculated by ecoFLEX helps to come to the right decision on the strategic and operational level in production systems.