Understanding Flexibility in Supply Chains: A Conceptual Framework and Models

This paper presents the results of a conceptual study and literature review aimed at understanding flexibility in the context of supply chains. The study indicated that several types of feasible in supply chains. Identification and exploitation of flexibilities of these flexibility types is important for enhancing the competitive performance of supply chains. Practicing managers would benefit from understanding the nature of flexibility in supply chains and how it can be exploited to meet the customer requirements. Towards this, the paper proposes a conceptual framework and conceptual models that could help researchers and practitioners to understand supply chain flexibility in a more intuitive manner. The approach adopted is to systematically explore the underlying concepts of flexibility in the internal chains (manufacturing systems) and to extend them into the domain of external chains (supply chains). The proposed conceptual framework is based on resource-transformation-process-product interdependencies and, using this, various types of flexibility possible in supply chains have been identified. These flexibility types are discussed in relation to the manufacturing systems and the ideas are extended to the domain of supply chains. The paper is motivated by the view of Wadhwa and Browne (1989) where flexibility is seen as a means to provide alternative options for the flow of entities (material, resources, information etc) through various interacting processes in any system.