PRODUCTION NETWORK FLEXIBILITY: THE KEY TO PRODUCTION NETWORK COORDINATION

Paper in proceedings, 2013

The world is becoming less stable and the ability coordinate production networks is increasingly important. To improve coordination within networks it is necessary to describe the relationship between the ability of the units in the network to adopt to changes and the aibility of the network as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to develop the concept of production network flexibility, i.e. the ability of the production network to adapt to changes. The concept is based on existing descriptions of manufacturing and supply chain flexibility and applied to a single case study of a production transfer from Holland to Sweden. The paper widens the concept of flexibility by linking manufacturing and supply chain flexibility of single units to the ability of a production network to adapt to changes. By this it contributes to the question of how to accomplish coordination within a production network on an operational level.