Assuring the Competitiveness of European Manufacturer through Changeability in Manufacturing

Thorsten Blecker and Günter Graf
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Günter Graf: University of Klagenfurt, Austria

Zagreb International Review of Economics and Business, 2004, vol. 7, issue Special Conference Issue, 109-126

Abstract: Changeability has become a buzzword for operations management, especially in German literature. Therefore, we analyse this concept in comparison with existing concepts for variability, such as flexibility and agility. Agility is an enterprise-wide concept incorporating product design as well as manufacturing systems design and aiming at lean and often dislocated manufacturing processes. Flexibility means that an operation system is variably within a specific combination of in-, out and throughput. Changeability, in contrast, means the ability of an operation system to autonomously alter the configuration to meet new, prior unknown demands e. g. from the market. Changeability is then the ability to realise new states of the in-, out- and throughput. Additionally, the reconfiguration of the system has to be realised as quickly as the environmental changes. Therefore, to be changeable, the speed of adaptation is important.

Keywords: changeability; operations system; competitive advantage; strategic resource (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L21 L23 M11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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