Assessing supply chain flexibility: a conceptual framework and case study

Flexibility has been considered as a major determinant of competitiveness in an increasingly intense competition in the marketplace. A large body of literature has been addressing various issues of flexibility in the last two decades. However, the discussions have mainly been from the viewpoint of a manufacturing company as a single entity in a supply chain. The flexibility related to machine, process, routing, part, worker and the like are all associated with a manufacturing or a production system. With the advent of the supply chain management concepts, business communities have been realising that being flexible in a production system only is insufficient. Thus, flexibility concepts should be broadened from the perspective of a production system into a supply chain system. However, the study addressing supply chain flexibility is still limited. This paper presents a framework for assessing flexibility of a supply chain. Four main parts of flexibility are identified including flexibility of the product delivery system, production system, product development, and supply system. In each of these parts, a number of pertinent elements are defined. A general guideline for conducting flexibility assessment is also presented. In an attempt to assess the model validity, a case study also forms a part of the paper.