Manufacturing Flexibility in a Filter Manufacturing Enterprise - A Case Study

Flexibility has become a key factor in the successful and profitable operation if business entetprises. Globalization if markets, rapid technological developments and intense competition has made it imperative for all manufacturing entetprises to be responsive to changes. Therefore, flexibility is needed. At the same time, a high productitvity is desired in the face of resource crunch and Severe competition. This paper presents a case stucfy of Purolator India Limited, Parwanoo, India and is a part of exhaustive survey covering aspects related to flexibility. The relationships between various types of flexibility and productivity have been established. The values of different types of flexibility have been found at various intevals of time for the entetprise. Various types of productivity have been calculated for the corresponding time intervals. The trends of flexibility and productiviry have been determined. An approach has been suggested for managing flexibility in future. A hierarchy of flexibility, listing the order in which various types of flexibility should be focused in future, is also given. SAP (situation-actor-process) analysis has been carried out leading to identification of learning issued and conclusions.