Development of a manufacturing flexibility hierarchy through factor and cluster analysis

Purpose – The ability of production organizations to respond quickly to changes in the market with new products requires flexibility. The relationship between manufacturing flexibility and the performance of organizations in new product development is not well characterized. The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a flexibility model focused on new product performance in manufacturing organizations empirically in one industrial sector.Design/methodology/approach – Hypothesized relationships between manufacturing flexibility, new product type, and new product performance are empirically tested using survey data from 273 companies, representing a range of US electronic manufacturers.Findings – Factor and cluster analysis identifies eight distinct flexibility dimensions and a hierarchy among these dimensions. The relationships between the identified flexibility dimensions and new product performance, as tested through correlation analyses, are found to be dependent on the type of new product develop...

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