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Attaining the highest level of manufacturing system organization requires low-cost structural flexibility, associated response speed and adaptability to the changing market and technological environment. The low-cost flexibility of a manufacturing system is a combination of organizational elements that leads to the balancing of the system internal flexibility and leanness levels. A basic problem in the balancing process is that both the flexibility and the leanness of manufacturing exclude each other (i.e. what is lean cannot be flexible, and vice versa). This study analyzed the levels of the internal flexibility in two ways for improving manufacturing systems: based on the world class manufacturing approach (WCM) and based on the x-manufacturing approach (xMS). Estimating the cost of internal flexibility will allow for the subsequent statement of their leanness costs and thus enable the development of low-cost flexibility.
Keywords: Internal flexibility, WCM, xMS© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.