On the measurement of labor flexibility

Researchers agree that a flexible system should be supported by its flexible elements, such as facilities and labor. Advanced technology is not enough to ensure that a manufacturing system is flexible. Flexible labor is the major factor that makes a system really flexible. Therefore, labor flexibility is a vitally important contribution to system flexibility. Unlike other flexibility types, such as machine flexibility, volume flexibility, routing flexibility, product flexibility, production flexibility, and process flexibility, researchers seem to have paid little attention on labor flexibility, although it has been concluded that labor flexibility has a significant impact on shop performance. Moreover, so far little work has been done on proposing models for measuring labor flexibility. This paper is intended to fill that gap.