Managing the Manufacturing Flexibility in a Piston Ring Manufacturing Plant – A Case Study

The present manufacturing systems have become very complex. This requires the manufacturing systems to rapidly adjust itself to changes, complexities, and uncertainties. Therefore, flexibility is needed. At the same time, productivity is also desired due to resource crunch and severe competition. This paper presents an approach for managing flexibility in a piston ring manufacturing firm, keeping productivity improvement in mind. The values of various types of flexibility have been found at various intervals of time for the plant. Various types of productivity have been calculated for the corresponding time intervals. The trends of flexibility and productivity 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 to arrive at learning issues.