Measurement of Load and Capacity Flexibility in Manufacturing

The importance of flexibility in manufacturing will further increase with the continuous progression of the fourth industrial revolution. Above all, the target lot size one and the accompanying, continuously expanding diversity of variants require extensive flexibility potentials in manufacturing. In this paper, a literature review is given of flexibility types and measurement approaches in manufacturing. Regarding this, the measurement approaches will be classified based on their measurement principle. In addition, an evaluation of these measures using defined requirements takes place. The self-developed measurement methods which are described in this paper make a contribution to the systematic identification of the current load and capacity flexibility in manufacturing. An explanatory case study illustrates the application of these methods which are based on modelling and analysis of workload fluctuations in waiting queues.