| The conceptual framework treats flexibility as a general tool available to a firm for responding to uncertainty and opportunity. Transformation systems consist of three stages: inputs, processes, and outputs. Each stage has both uncertainty and opportunity associated with it, as well as one or more source of flexibility. The underlying idea is that at each stage flexibility can be acquired to respond to the uncertainties and opportunities confronting it. Any flexibility in excess of that required to respond to that stage's uncertainty becomes an opportunity to enhance the following stage's flexibility. Similarly, any uncertainty in excess of that accommodated by that stage's flexibility becomes an uncertainty for the next stage.;This dissertation tested the relationship between process and output stages, by investigating three questions: First, what process flexibilities are provided to attain greater responsiveness in product delivery? Second, does process uncertainty moderate the impact of process flexibilities on product delivery? Third, what management initiatives aimed at enhancing process flexibilities and reducing process uncertainty, created the most responsiveness in product delivery?;The PCB industry was chosen because flexibility was understood to be a core competency. Being customized products, the firm's production processes must continually react to the market needs. Also, the industry uses a rich variety of technologies, thus making the results more readily generalizable.;A 10-firm study was employed to understand the domain of flexibility and establish construct validity. The propositions generated from the research model were tested using data from 75 plants collected through a mail questionnaire.;The results support the view that process flexibility and process uncertainty interact in producing an effect on delivery flexibillity. Furthermore, process uncertainty has an adverse impact on output uncertainty.;Plants with relatively higher labor training, implementation of employee suggestions, and inter-department communication, reported lower process uncertainty. On the other hand, plants who used more training, job rotation, internal technical knowledge, external boundary scanning, shop-floor communication, inter-department communication, shop-floor visibility, equipment redundancy, and support for flexibility, reported higher process flexibility.;While this study was exploratory, the results lend credibility to the transformation theory of flexibility being proposed in this thesis. |
