Manufacturing Flexibility And Its Relationship With Customer Satisfaction: Based On Strategic Perspective

1970's, flexible manufacturing machine (FMM) and flexible manufacturing system (FMS) was created in west countries, after that, manufacturing flexibility was recognized as a key manufacturing ability by researchers of production and operation management and manufacturing managers. It was a research focus till now. Along with technology improvement and economy development, base on flexible advanced manufacturing machine, some new competitive focus such as variety of products and quick product innovation come out in west markets.Along with the improvement of economy level and globalization, the condation of our country's market is tha same as west countries. We must see that, in our market, most of the companies that got competitive advantage have foreign investment, especially in manufacturing industry. Most of our own companies have not constructed proper manufacturing flexibility and used it fully to compete to get competitive advante. Less of knowledge of manufacturing flexibility is one reason of it. Our researchers in production and operation management field do less research on manufacturing flexibility, especially for the reason that the literature before the late of 1990s can not be found in information database.To help the manufacturers in China learn how to make flexible theoretical knowledge enhance market competitiveness quickly, this paper systematically reviews the foreign research of manufacturing flexibility, resolve existing main confusion of the theory, construct a clear theoretical system of manufacturing flexibility, especially clear the resource structure of flexible manufacturing, clarify the relationship between manufacturing flexibility and the focus of market competition , build the relationship model between manufacturing flexibility and customer satisfaction, and validate the critical relationship by using the empirical data.The follows are the main conclusions of this study:Manufacturing flexibility is widely regarded as a key manufacturing capability; it can be used as a competitive weapon to help enterprises gain competitive advantage. When the experts of production and operation management analyses the key focus of manufacturing, manufacturing flexibility would be included normally, especially, the value of manufacturing flexibility is no doubt in today's competitive environment.The production of manufacturing flexibility depends on the advanced manufacturing equipment. The characteristic of advanced manufacturing equipment are multi-function, digital and automation, which makes manufacturing equipment have the ability to produce multiple products, and because it can convert the function automatically, the conversion of time consumption and cost of ownership have been well controlled . Manufacturing System has the flexibility when the use of advanced manufacturing equipment has been used.There are three content elements of manufacturing flexibility; they are scope, flexibility and balance. Like the concept of quality, manufacturing flexibility is a multidimensional concept. Scope refers to the manufacturing capabilities which the manufacturing system contains; flexibility is the ease of conversions among different functions, and it is considered mainly from the conversion of time and the conversion of cost; balance refers to the size of the functional loss of functional conversions, the main considerations are the accuracy and speed of processing both.The concept of manufacturing flexibility: manufacturing flexibility is dependent on the multi-functional flexible equipment and the matching resources and management methods, it can make manufacturing system run fast, consume few, change stably within a certain range to adapt to the environment change passively and create environmental change initiatively, to obtain and maintain competitive advantages. This concept includes the main content of manufacturing flexibility and it will help scholars and manufacturing managers to understand the concept.There are conflicts between flexibility and uncertainty relations. When the uncertainty of environment and environmental changes had not been districted clearly, early scholars thought that the value of manufacturing flexibility was the response to the uncertainty of internal and external environment, and this judgment was been considered correctly for a long period of time. This paper speculates the relationship between manufacturing flexibility and the uncertainty of environmental, and gets the contradictory relationship between the two, this conclusion changes the direction of thinking the value of manufacturing flexibility fundamentally.The flexibility of entire manufacturing system are made by the flexible synergies of three subsystems from view of the manufacturing strategy, the subsystems include production and processing system, logistics system and planning and control system. Each subsystem is man-machine system, and the persons with appropriate skills and the corresponding function machines play with their respective values collaboratively. Among these subsystems, the production and processing systems is the base, and other two systems are supplement. Considering the importance of production and processing system, this paper will analyses detailed because the production and processing system will be refined to the machinery equipment and production and processing staff.Total quality management and management techniques such as JIT play positive roles in promoting the realization of manufacturing flexibility; modular and standardized production will assist manufacturing flexibility to achieve product diversification and rapid product innovation; management information system plays an important role in the process of conformation and value playing of manufacturing flexibility; the management of knowledge and the training of personnel play important roles in the process of conformation and value playing of manufacturing flexibility.The value of manufacturing flexibility is to achieve product diversification and rapid product innovation. Product diversification and rapid product innovation are the focus of market competition, and they are the competitive weapons which can impact on customer satisfaction directly. manufacturing flexibility make multiple varieties of small batch production possible, make mixing production possible, achieve product diversification, save the investment, and ensure the cost of product without building more production lines. Good match of manufacturing flexibility and R & D accelerates the pace of product innovation , meets the needs of customers better and responds to customer needs faster.Manufacturing flexibility impacts on customer satisfaction through its impacting on product diversification and product innovation. As manufacturer capacity, Manufacturing flexibility can not be perceived by customers directly, while product diversification and product innovation are able to lead to higher customer satisfaction directly, the effect of manufacturing flexibility on product diversification and rapid product innovation, affect the customer satisfaction indirectly. If you can not play the value of manufacturing flexibility to achieve product variety and rapid product innovation very well, its impact on customer satisfaction is out of the question.R & D plays a key role in the process of manufacturing flexibility exerting its value. R & D capabilities have played a key role in the realization of product diversification and rapid product innovation. Manufacturing flexibility and R & D capabilities have equal shares in the implementation of product diversification, and in the realization of rapid product innovation process, R & D plays a major role.Manufacturing changes and manufacturing flexibility support R & D to achieve rapid product innovation. For the manufacturing system , product innovation involves more manufacturing changes;Manufacturing flexibility is able to facilitate product innovation to some extent, but product innovation more depends on manufacturing changes.For the upstream manufacturing enterprises in supply chain, manufacturing flexibility has a significant effect on customization, and affects the satisfaction of customers. And for the downstream manufacturing enterprises in the supply chain, the impact of manufacturing flexibility on customization is not significant, but the impact of the custom on customer satisfaction is still significant.The follows are the main innovation of this study:This paper reviews the content of all aspects which manufacturing flexibility covers systematically, gets a clear concept of manufacturing flexibility. The problem that there is no clear concept of manufacturing flexibility, has troubled vast scholars of this research area, and makes foundation of the related development instability, damages the practice of guiding value of these research results. The paper analyzes the main point of confusions of the concept of manufacturing flexibility one by one, and corrects the wrong judges in existing literature, and obtains a clear concept of manufacturing flexibility. The clear concept of manufacturing flexibility has great value for the development of research, and also makes manufacturing managers understand and use this critical manufacturing capacity better, conducives to the combination of theory and practice.On the perspective of manufacturing strategy, this paper analyses the realization of manufacturing flexibility and its value systematically, constructed a constitute model of manufacturing flexibility and a value model of manufacturing flexibility. Although some scholars have studied manufacturing flexibility on strategic perspective, the errors in making judgment of the value of manufacturing flexibility made the deviation from the correct direction. Additionally, although these analyses were from the strategic perspective, the analyses interpreted the strategy as the height of analyses during the process of research, as well as the height of the whole enterprise, rather than the method of analysis, thus these analyses were not really from the strategic perspective. Strategic perspective stresses the height of analyses, it also stresses competition and the corresponding arrangements of competition, the competition in the market-oriented is the core of strategic management.Based on the view of strategy, this paper identifies the necessary elements of manufacturing flexibility and builds a composition model of manufacturing flexibility by the starting from the resources; and analyzes the relationship between manufacturing flexibility and the focus of market competition, builds the value of manufacturing flexibility; in order to distinct manufacturing flexibility from the other key manufacturing capacities clearly, builds a integrated model from the manufacturing resources , manufacturing capacity to the focus of market competition.According to the connotation of manufacturing flexibility, the paper constructs a measurement system of manufacturing flexibility to provide reliable evidence of scale for the future study. This design of the measurement system has its headways in the identification of elements of manufacturing flexibility and in the design of the measure of each dimension. Index system has been paid extensive attention by scholars, it is the basis of empirical research work, the empirical measure of scale in this paper can help to work smoothly.This paper uses empirical data to verify the critical path relationship between manufacturing flexibility and customer satisfaction. Based on theoretical analysis, the author makes the Mode of manufacturing flexibility and customer satisfaction, and proposes the corresponding assumptions, collects the empirical data to test the hypothesis. In order to obtain a clear path relationship, this paper examines the relationship among manufacturing flexibility, the focus of the competitive market and the customer satisfaction, also considers the role of other key capabilities in the process. The testing of empirical data enhances the credibility the theoretical model, and it is conducive to enhance the credibility of the theoretical model and to enhance the guide value of practice from theory.