Today business environment becomes open-ended, chaotic and out of control. These trends attract more attention to manufacturing flexibility. Furthermore, they have brought competition among supply chains than competition among individual companies.
Many manufacturing firms have tried to acquire and exploit manufacturing flexibility as a source of competitive advantage. Few companies, however, have succeeded in acquiring manufacturing flexibility because it is not clear from what practices and activities they could acquire and improve a specific type of manufacturing flexibility.
It is well known that manufacturing flexibility plays a crucial role in improving a sup-ply chain’s responsiveness. There are few researches, however, explaining the relationships between the specific flexibility in a plant and the supply chain performance. Also there is little literature dealing with how to leverage accumulated capabilities of a firm. This study focuses on the relationships between a specific practice, a specific type of manufacturing flexibility, and the supply chain’s performances through an in-depth case study.
We suggest a comprehensive framework for analyzing the manufacturing flexibility and their combined impacts on the supply chain’s market performances. First, we show the relationship between manufacturing practices and their market performances. Second, we ex-plain how system’s flexibility is realized by combining elementary flexibilities. Third, we analyze the relationship between elementary practices and the supply chain’s volume flexibility. This validates our model connecting the manufacturing flexibility and the supply chain’s performances. We conclude this paper by summarizing practical implications and future re-search directions.
