Manufacturing flexibility research: A review of literature and agenda for future research

Academic and corporate interest on manufacturing flexibility has risen sharply in recent years and a number of papers have been published in this area. This paper aims to explore this field further by: first, offering a systematic review of over 100 research papers published in various academic journals from 1987 to March 2013 in terms of country, journal, methodology, application areas and issue coverage, second, suggesting and exploring the developing trends in the literature and providing some future research directions. Some of the important observations found in this paper are: (a) lack of adequate research on the relationship between manufacturing flexibility and other variables such as environmental uncertainties, business strategies, organizational attributes, innovation and product types (b) several other dimensions of performance, such as innovation performance, environmental performance and social performance have been ignored while measuring impact of manufacturing flexibility on performance (c) further attention required on issues like measurement of overall manufacturing flexibility level of an organization (d) domination of manufacturing flexibility research in developed countries. This review is useful for both practitioners and academicians, as it outlines major lines of research in the manufacturing flexibility field. © Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management 2013.