Study On Enterprise Flexibility And Its Evaluation Based On Entropy Weight

In 21 century, world economic environment becomes more and more complicated. Competition faced by enterprises is more and more intensive. Consumption characteristic of individuation and diversification not only provides opportunities, but also brings challenges to today's enterprises. How to improve flexibility in order to enhance the capability is a long-term task. With uncertainties increasing, the traditional way emphasizing on flexibilities of manufacturing system cannot adapt to today's competition situation, enterprises are required to improve flexibility in an expanded range–construct flexible enterprise. Therefore, to hold flexibility from an angle of the whole enterprise becomes more important. The main content of this paper is as follows:First, the conception of enterprise flexibility is advanced. One point of this paper is that, the conception of flexibility should be examined from a customer-oriented perspective, so this paper balances both the angle of customer and that of enterprise, with careful analysis, two kinds of flexibilities are distinguished: External Flexibility and Internal Flexibility. After examining the relationship between the two kinds of flexibilities, the conception of enterprise flexibility is defined.Then, this paper carefully analyzes External Flexibility and Internal Flexibility mentioned above.For one thing, Internal Flexibility is analyzed. The enterprise flexibility is organically composed of all flexibilities of subsystems. Series of flexibility capabilities in six subsystems are examined here. Six subsystems include manufacturing system, logistics system, supply system, R&D system, information system, and organization system. Finally, an index system of six flexible subsystems and twenty flexibility capabilities is constituted.Fore another thing, External Flexibility is analyzed. In this paper, External Flexibility is defined as a group of flexibilities which catch the eye of customers, influence customer satisfaction and are showed by enterprise. Customers always care about the changeability in variety, design (include new product), volume and delivery time. Therefore, four flexibilities which connect with these factors are examined, which include: Mix Flexibility, Product Flexibility, Volume Flexibility and Delivery Flexibility.In the following chapter, for evaluating enterprise flexibility, a model of entropy coefficients multi-level fuzzy comprehensive evaluation is introduced. The index system of Internal Flexibility achieved above is used here. Weightiness of each index is determined using both methods of entropy and AHP. The last part is a numerical example of this model, proving that this model is feasible in this place.The results of evaluation of enterprise flexibility are the basis for improving flexibility. Referring to the problem of how to improving flexibility, this paper presents some suggestions, for instance, coordination of each flexible subsystem; importance of information technology; reasonable size of flexibility; chose right strategy ,etc.In the end, the content of this paper is concluded, and the deficiency and where needs improvements is pointed out.