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Justifying new manufacturing technology is usually very difficult since the most important benefits are often strategic and difficult to quantify. Traditional capital budgeting procedures that rely on return measures based on direct cost savings and incremental future cash flows do not normally capture the strategic benefits of higher quality, faster responses to wider ranges of customer needs, and the options for future growth made available by flexible manufacturing technology. Adding to these limitations is the difficulty of using traditional cost accounting systems to generate the information necessary for justifying new manufacturing investments. This paper reviews these problems and recommends procedures useful for assessing investments in flexible manufacturing technology.

Against a background of a customization imperative embraced by manufacturing firms in industrialised nations and the concomitant call for more balanced performance measurement systems (PMS), this study seeks to examine the mediating role of both non‐financial and financial performance measures in the relationship between a firm's strategic orientation of flexible manufacturing and organisational performance.

A path‐analytical model is adopted using questionnaire data from 84 Australian manufacturing firms.

The results indicate that, first, firms emphasising a flexible manufacturing strategy utilise non‐financial as well as financial performance measures; second, these performance measures are associated with higher organisational performance; and third, there is a positive association between a firm's strategic emphasis on flexible manufacturing and organisation performance via non‐financial and financial performance measures.

While there is agreement on the beneficial role of non‐financial performance measures in supporting strategic priorities associated with customization strategies, equivocal research results have emerged on the role of financial performance measures in this context. The study underscores the importance of both non‐financial and financial performance measures in this context.

The paper reinstates the value of financial performance measures for firms pursuing customization type strategies and adds to one's knowledge of PMSs by exploring the intervening role of such systems in linking flexible manufacturing strategy to organisation performance.

Concerns the effects of world class manufacturing on the quality of working life of shop floor workers. Theoretically, it is grounded in the conflict between two opposing paradigms – the flexible specialisation thesis and labour process theory. Methodologically, it is based on qualitative data gathered in 1996 during in‐depth interviews with employees of a West of Ireland factory established in the use of world class manufacturing methods (fieldwork for a Masters degree minor dissertation). The results of the research indicate that the majority of world class manufacturing methods increase the intensity of work, without yielding proportionate compensation for workers. Based on these findings, the interpretation of world class manufacturing supported by labour process theory was found to be far more accurate a rendering than that promoted by the flexible specialisation thesis.

The purpose of this paper is to test the mediating role of three types of innovation (product, process, and organizational) in the relationship between manufacturing flexibility and performance.

Building on the resource‐based view, the paper examines the indirect effects of manufacturing flexibility on organizational performance considering product, process, and organizational innovation as mediating variables. A sample of 159 Spanish firms is taken to test the proposed theoretical model through structural equations modeling using the partial least squares approach.

The effect on organizational performance of adopting a flexible productive system is mediated by incorporating product, process, and organizational innovation. This paper calls for caution in defending flexible manufacturing systems as universally efficient solutions, and argues that their productivity is linked to the complementary introduction of organizational and technological innovations.

Firms that pursue manufacturing flexibility should develop innovation capabilities to obtain an improvement in organizational performance. Therefore, managers should bear in mind that the mere fact of adopting a flexible manufacturing system will not guarantee improvements in firm performance. If manufacturing flexibility is to help improve company performance, managers should use this flexibility to generate organizational capabilities based on product, process, and organizational innovations, since these are capabilities that can create competitive advantages.

Operations management literature has not reached a consensus about the effect of manufacturing flexibility on organizational performance. This paper helps both academics and managers to gain a better understanding of this question by considering the mediating effect of three types of innovation (product, process, and organizational) in this relationship.

A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) helps improve the system’s performance, thus increasing its overall competitiveness. FMS is an essential component of Industry 4.0 (I4.0), which has revolutionized the way firms manufacture their products. This study aims to investigate the diverse focus of the research being published over the years and the direction of scholarly work in applying FMSs in business and management.

A total of 1,096 bibliometric data were extracted from the Scopus database from the years 2001 to 2021. A systematic review and bibliometric analysis were performed on the data and related articles for performance measurement and scientific mapping on the FMS themes.

Based on co-keyword, the study reveals four major themes in the FMS field: mathematical models and quantitative techniques, scheduling and optimization techniques, cellular manufacturing and decision-making in FMSs. Based on bibliometric coupling on 2018–2021 bibliometric data, four themes emerged for future research: scheduling problems in FMS, manufacturing cell formation problem, interplay of FMS with other latest technologies and I4.0 and FMS.

The originality lies in answering the following research questions: What are the most highlighting themes in FMS, and how have they evolved over the past 20 years (2001–2021)? What topics have been at the forefront of research in FMS in the past five years (2016–2021)? What are the promising avenues of research in FMS?

Examines research work aimed at exploring and developing a new, object‐oriented system design and operation concept, and new system software and hardware design concepts which could be used to design and build an open, flexible and reconfigurable material handling system in a Computer Integrated Manufacturing [CIM] environment that could cope with changes imposed by the market on today’s manufacturing industries. Looks at the design of a reconfigurable and flexible conveyor system and outlines the benefits of using a 3‐D CIM reference model when developing CIM hardware and software control. Concludes that the proposed new conveyor system helps resolves the need for an assembly system which can achieve rapid and flexible responses to meet the challenge set by changing customer requirements.

In the real world many companies combine the operations of manufacturing, assembly and disassembly. Thus, the integration of just‐in‐time FMS, FAS, and flexible disassembly system (DAS) models poses an interesting problem. The purpose of this paper is to provide major emphasis on a new simulation model for design and performance evaluation of a flexible assembly and disassembly system with dual Kanban under a stochastic system. This paper also primarily investigates the effect of varying the number of kanban cards, mean inter‐arrival time of demand and locations of the bottlenecks on the performance integration of JIT flexible manufacturing, assembly and disassembly systems.

Simulation is carried out in ARENA and data is analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). This paper investigates the effect of varying number of kanban cards, mean inter‐arrival time of demand, and locations of the bottlenecks on the performance integration of JIT flexible manufacturing, assembly and disassembly systems. The performance measures that are simultaneously considered are the fill rate, work in process, and mean cycle time. This paper emphasizes that understanding the interactions between the variables and their effects on system performance is of utmost importance for managers in improving performance processes.

In manufacturing practice, there are many industrial units that represent the mixture of the referred three models. This paper presents a new simulation model for design and performance evaluation of a flexible assembly and disassembly system with dual kanban. The simulation results are statistically compared with MANOVA. MANOVA is used to perform the test with multiple objective functions, e.g. with the average production cycle time, percentage average fill rate, and work‐in‐process. The conclusion to be drawn is that minimized WIP can be obtained by higher percentage average fill rate, lower WIP, small average part cycles times, and increasing in kanban cards while simultaneously retaining full customer satisfaction.

The researcher presents the newly developed kanban system into the production system of JIT flexible manufacturing, assembly and disassembly system with simulation technique. Furthermore, by assigning time factors to the models, several performance measures can be easily computed. Then, the researcher tests the effect of the number of kanban card on integration of JIT flexible manufacturing, assembly and disassembly systems using a simulation approach, the simulation model is developed using the ARENA simulation package. The results are applied to a small case study. For a single product under the integration of JIT flexible manufacturing, assembly and disassembly systems, as the number of kanban cards increase, the fill rate along with work in process and the mean cycle time increases as well.

Over the last years traditional accounting methods of investment appraisal (such as pay‐back period and discounted cash‐flow analysis) have been abundantly criticized for not being appropriate to evaluate strategic investments, in advanced production technology. It has been argued that strategic arguments should be used as the only sound basis for investment justification. However, opinions continue to be divided about which evaluation criterion (strategic and/or financial) should prevail in the evaluation of flexible manufacturing technology (FMT) investments if the firm is to end up with a successful project. Studies the investment decision‐making process which precedes a major investment in FMT. It is hypothesized that different ways of investment justification can lead to high financial performance of investment projects in FMT, but each way may not be equally effective in every situation. Based on field research in six manufacturing companies, some of the key characteristics of the decision process on the one hand and the investment context on the other have been identified. Suggests how their interaction may affect the ex post financial performance of an FMT investment project.

There are some 30 Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) currently being installed and assimilated in Britain. A pilot study involving Anderson‐Strathclyde plc, a precision engineering company, Cessna Fluid Power Limited, Cummins Engines Limited, and Lucas Electrical Limited shows that these companies expected to achieve a variety of economic advantages, based on savings in direct production cost as a consequence of improved machine design, reduced lead times, and production of “sets” of related components; all these factors being due to the introduction of FMS. Also anticipated were marketing advantages, arising out of improved production and improved adaptability to market fluctuation. In each company investment in FMS was seen to be a crucial factor in marketing strategy. It will be important in future to monitor government policy on financial assistance for FMS, as this will relate directly to a company's FMS investment decisions.

Flexible Assembly Systems (FASs) are normally associated with the automatic, or robotic, assembly of products, supported by automated material handling systems. However, manual assembly operations are still prevalent within many industries, where the complexity and variety of products prohibit the development of suitable automated assembly equipment. This article presents a generic model for incorporating flexibility into the design and control of assembly operations concerned with high variety/low volume manufacture, drawing on the principles for Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) and Just‐in‐Time (JIT) delivery. It is based on work being undertaken in an electronics company where the assembly operations have been overhauled and restructured in response to a need for greater flexibility, shorter cycle times and reduced inventory levels. The principles employed are in themselves not original. However, the way they have been combined and tailored has created a total manufacturing control system which represents a new concept for responding to demands placed on market driven firms operating in an uncertain environment.