Flexibility and Complexity of Effective Enterprises

The aim of this research was to give contribution to the efforts that are being made to develop the procedures of structural designing of industrial systems - highly effective enterprises. For that. purpose, this paper analyses the conditions and possibilities that would enable those structures to adapt to changes in the surroundings - flexibility and management adequacy of organizational structures - by lowering the degree of complexity. Special focus is given to Mass Customization - tailoring the production to the needs and preferences of the customer. This requires high flexibility of a system as this is what determines the costs in this type of production. The original contributions of this paper are the definitions and determination of the measures of the two most important characteristics of an enterprise - complexity and flexibility, and establishing their interdependence. While in the great body of literature complexity is measured by size (number of structural elements), this paper observes the complexity degree as comprising a number of interrelationships between the elements of a structure, beside the number of elements. Flexibility of the structures of an enterprise consists of three interdependent components: technological component, capacity component and flexibility of flows. (C) 2008 Journal of Mechanical Engineering. All rights reserved.