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The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of factors and their associated attributes that largely influence achievement of manufacturing flexibility.

Using two sequential phases consisting of literature review, plant visits and focus group interviews, the study identifies key factors that influence manufacturing flexibility and develop and validate these factors through postal survey. In total, 211 responses from multiple industries were collected to analyze the data.

The study identifies and develops eight factors and their associated 39 attributes that largely influence achievement of manufacturing flexibility. Out of eight underlying constructs, operational improvement practices construct reported highest level of variance followed by advanced manufacturing technology, human resource practices, supplier flexibility, supplier integration, customer integration, product-process technology integration and marketing and manufacturing integration.

The scope of the study is limited to the plant level. Therefore, other strategic-level factors, such as business strategy, the amount of investment, leadership quality have not been addressed in this research.

The findings can assist managers in improving the level of manufacturing flexibility by specifying key factors essential for achievement of manufacturing flexibility. An important implication for managers is that identification of factors should be followed by proper assessment and implementation so as to remain competitive in the market.

The findings provide insight into the factors that facilitate in achievement of manufacturing flexibility.

The primary purposes of this paper are to add support to the existing three‐dimensional concurrent engineering (3DCE) theoretical framework and to identify issues that currently hinder the adoption of 3DCE.

While 3DCE has been suggested as a way to improve new product development success and supply chain performance, the research on 3DCE is in its infancy, largely conceptual, or based on two, rather than all three aspects of 3DCE. To help bridge the gap between concept and theory for 3DCE, this paper provides a cross‐disciplinary perspective, incorporating literature from supply chain management (SCM) and logistics, operations management, marketing channels, and general management and strategy, to help ground the theory of 3DCE. Based on this literature, testable research propositions are developed.

Based on the review of the literature, there is substantial theoretical grounding for 3DCE and evidence that it should provide beneficial outcomes to organizations. 3DCE is also a very useful theoretical lens as researchers become more concerned with taking a systemic view of supply chain and organizational performance. Effectively using 3DCE as a lens may require different research approaches, such as systems dynamics and supply chain mapping.

This research provides insights into the relatively low adoption rates of 3DCE in practice. Successful 3DCE requires top management support as well as functional support. It is not simply a SCM tool.

From a research perspective, this paper helps provide support for using 3DCE as a theoretical lens for grounding future research. It also provides an insight into research methods that might be most useful in gaining greater understanding of 3DCE practices.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors influencing manufacturing flexibility adoption and simultaneously explores some of the key issues prevailing in manufacturing flexibility adoption in Indian context. The study also stratifies critical factors for successful manufacturing flexibility adoption.

Using exploratory sequential design, a series of focus group interviews were conducted with Indian manufacturing professionals and these interviews were supplemented by 127 follow-up structured questionnaires.

Two major themes emerged from the first phase of the study – role played by some of the unexplored antecedents of manufacturing flexibility and key issues in manufacturing flexibility adoption. In the second phase, a list of factors was categorized based on their degree of importance in manufacturing flexibility adoption.

Being qualitative in nature, the study suffers from inherent risk of subjectivity associated with manufacturing practitioners. A large-scale survey and rigorous quantitative analysis would be helpful to further validate the list of factors and underlying relationships among proposed factors.

The identified list of factors and some of the key issues in manufacturing flexibility adoption can be of great help to practitioners. The stratified list of factors can be further used by academicians to develop an instrument for manufacturing flexibility adoption.

The paper identifies a set of factors that affects manufacturing flexibility adoption. It offers a basis for instrument development for manufacturing flexibility adoption and provides direction for future quantitative research in manufacturing flexibility area.

The study aims to conceptualize and empirically develop an instrument to measure manufacturing flexibility development practices in firms.

Using a dataset of 315 responses, a series of procedures were used to develop, modify and refine item measures of constructs to enhance their reliability and validity. Further, following a competing model strategy, alternative models were compared to finalize the manufacturing flexibility development practices.

The study develops 36-item instrument capturing eight distinct constructs that influence manufacturing flexibility development, namely operational improvement practices, supplier integration practices, advanced manufacturing technologies, advanced human resource practices, supplier flexibility, customer integration practices, marketing and manufacturing integration practices and product-process technology integration. The derived factors exhibit an adequate level of consistency, reliability and validity.

Since the external environment is always affected by externalities, tools and technologies used to develop flexibility may also vary over time. Therefore, the developed measurement instrument can be used over the medium term. Further, the statistical generalizability of this study cannot be drawn beyond the scope of this sample.

The derived items measure and their underlying factor structure facilitates practitioners to identify areas that need attention. Practically, practitioners should strive to improve multiple factors that influence manufacturing flexibility to arrive at the full realization of flexibility.

This study is probably the first to develop an instrument for assessing the factors influencing the potential of manufacturing flexibility.

The study aims to assess and prioritise the enablers of manufacturing flexibility by evaluating the degree of environmental uncertainty and manufacturing flexibility in an uncertain environment.

The study proposes a methodological approach based on fuzzy quality function deployment (FQFD), fuzzy analytical hierarchical process (FAHP) and fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (FTOPSIS) to assess and prioritise enablers of manufacturing flexibility in an uncertain environment.

The study proposes a methodological approach that can facilitate firms to concentrate on preferred enablers and assist them in formulating a strategy to develop manufacturing flexibility. The empirical case study analysis of an Indian auto-air conditioning manufacturing firm was done to illustrate the effectiveness, flexibility and feasibility of the proposed approach.

The proposed approach is limited to manufacturing flexibility. This study does not consider inter-dependencies among environmental uncertainties.

The proposed methodological approach can assist practitioners in the identification and development of the preferred enablers to improve manufacturing flexibility. Thus, practitioners can invest strategically in the right resources to improve manufacturing flexibility.

The study proposes and validates a methodological approach that simultaneously addresses drivers and enablers of manufacturing flexibility; therefore, it aims to fill the gaps of earlier studies that have majorly studied flexibility concept in an isolated way.

This study seeks to investigate the impact of supply chain integration (SCI) practices on economic performance in Vietnamese enterprises.

Based on data collected from 144 Vietnamese enterprises, this study employs partial least squares path modeling to analyze the direct and indirect relationships among external integration, information integration, process integration and economic performance.

Analytical results indicate that of the three SCI practices, external integration has a significant and positive impact on economic performance. Process integration and information integration, on the one hand, reveal insignificant direct impact on economic performance, and on the other, show significant indirect effect on economic performance through external integration.

This study sheds new light on the contribution of SCI to economic performance in developing economies and offers suggestions for not only local management but also foreign investors on the efficient allocation of resources to achieve higher economic performance.

Based on the resource-based view and organizational capability theory, we examine the effect of information technology (IT) on company performance through supply chain integration (SCI) from the upstream and downstream perspective of the whole supply chain.

Based on data collected from 296 cross-border e-commerce (CBE) companies in China, we used structural equation modeling with LISREL to test the conceptual model.

The results show that supplier and customer IT significantly promote supplier and customer system and process integration. Supplier system and process integration enhance operational performance. Meanwhile, IT indirectly affects financial performance through operational performance. Customer system integration has positive effects on operational and financial performance, with an indirect effect on financial performance through operational performance. However, customer process integration only improves financial performance.

We only use cross-sectional data from Zhejiang province of China to investigate relationships of related constructs. Future studies can also use longitudinal data in combination with secondary data from other provinces, regions and countries.

The results provide important managerial insights for CBE companies to sustain their competitive advantages by improving their performances through IT and SCI practices throughout the upstream and downstream data-driven supply chain.

This study contributes to the IT and SCI literature by exploring the effectiveness of IT in improving SCI and company performance from the upstream and downstream perspective and the perspective of IT.

The objective of this paper is to empirically test and verify the enablers of volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility and to assess the influence of these flexibilities on operational performance.

A research framework consisting of nine pairs of hypotheses was developed using an extensive literature review. Using a self-administered questionnaire, 391 responses were collected, and these responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and structural equation modeling techniques.

The findings empirically confirm the enablers of volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility. The proposed model explained 59 percent variance in volume flexibility and 63 percent variance in product-mix flexibility. Volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility together explained 38 percent variance in operational performance.

Theoretically, this study advances flexibility literature in two significant ways. First, the study conducts first of its kind quantitative empirical investigation considering upstream, downstream, and internal integration practices as enablers of volume flexibility and product-mix flexibility. Second, this study adds to the flexibility literature by suggesting the positive influence of volume and product-mix flexibility on the operational performance of firms.

The study reinforces the role of enablers in the development of volume and product-mix flexibilities. Thus, the study provides a comprehensive view of flexibility enablers that can be used as a diagnostic tool, which practitioners can use to assess and deploy flexibility.

This paper aims to simultaneously examine the impact of three types of supply chain integration (SCI) on three types of company performance from the perspective of organizational capability.

Using data collected from 617 companies in China and the structural equation modelling method, the research investigates the relationships among internal integration, customer integration, supplier integration, supplier‐oriented performance, customer‐oriented performance, and financial performance from the perspective of organizational capability.

The results show that internal integration improves external integration and that internal and external integration directly and indirectly enhance company performance. In addition, full or partial mediating effects among SCI and company performance are identified, and therefore explain the inconsistent findings in previous studies regarding the impacts of SCI on performance.

This study contributes to SCI, organizational capability theory literature, and SCI practices.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel hybrid approach to assess marketing-based flexibility with respect to its source factors, enablers and attributes.

The study demonstrates an application of a hybrid principal component analysis (PCA)-analytical hierarchical process (AHP)-multi-grade fuzzy approach (MFA) to measure marketing-based flexibility. Using PCA method, attributes, enablers and source factors of marketing-based flexibility were identified and a conceptual model was developed. AHP and MFA were used to compute marketing-based flexibility index.

The proposed approach measures existing level of marketing-based flexibility and therefore it identifies weak areas that should be taken care to improve flexibility.

The scope of the study is limited to plant level. The validity of the proposed approach is shown using a case study. For generalisation point of view, the application of this proposed approach should be investigated in a large number of firms in different industrial settings.

The study gives a reliable and valid method, which combines both statistical and MCDM techniques to measure existing level of flexibility and identify weak areas for flexibility improvement.

The findings provide insight into factors that should be worked upon to improve flexibility.