Capability flexibility: a decision support methodology for parallel service and manufacturing systems with flexible servers

Seyed Iravani, Bora Kolfal and Mark Van Oyen

IISE Transactions, 2011, vol. 43, issue 5, 363-382

Abstract: To obtain improved performance, many firms pursue operational flexibility by endowing their production operations with multiple capabilities (e.g., multi-skilled workers, flexible machines and/or flexible plants). This article focuses on the problem of ranking (according to average wait in queue) alternative system designs that vary by capacity and the structure of capabilities for open, parallel queueing networks with partially flexible servers. Prior literature introduced the Structural Flexibility (SF) concept and because the SF method was intended for a strategic context with very little information, it did not incorporate mean service times by demand type, server speeds, or wide ranges in demand arrival rates. This article develops the Capability Flexibility (CF) index methodology to extend the range of operational environments and designs that can be ranked. By showing the effectiveness of a deterministic, second-order approximation of a capability-design's relative flexibility/performance—the CF index—it proved possible to establish the insight that the proposed simple deterministic approximation of these complex stochastic is able to capture the dominant drivers of congestion of one design relative to another.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0740817X.2010.541177 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:uiiexx:v:43:y:2011:i:5:p:363-382

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/uiie20

DOI: 10.1080/0740817X.2010.541177

Access Statistics for this article

IISE Transactions is currently edited by Jianjun Shi

More articles in IISE Transactions from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().