Factors Driving Manufacturing Flexibility: The Taiwanese Case
Field Guide to Case Study Research in Business-to-business Marketing and Purchasing
ISBN: 978-1-78441-080-3
Publication date: 27 August 2014
Abstract
An issue that is becoming yet more relevant to modern manufacturers is that of flexibility. As life cycles become shorter a manufacturing firm can easily be left with redundant stock and dated processes. In Taiwan this issue has been addressed at several levels, this case study describes one such project. A Taiwanese academic conducted a study, gaining business acceptance of a hierarchical set of theoretical flexibility factors, then rearranging these via pictorial representations of fuzzy logic-derived plane surfaces, and finally re-presenting them to business as a set of ordered propositions designed to identify the key factors contributing to flexibility. The learning points relate, first, to the empirical facts uncovered about the specific factors that have a major bearing on manufacturing flexibility. These factors are, of course, specific to Taiwan and the current environment there. Second, though, is the more enduring illustration of a mixed-method case approach; where interviews, fuzzy logic analytical methods, and pictorial representation of the fuzzy logic output all combine to give clear guidance to managers of an industrial sector under stress, and to the policy makers who exert significant control over their environment.
Keywords
Citation
Lai, W.-H. and Marshall, R. (2014), "Factors Driving Manufacturing Flexibility: The Taiwanese Case", Field Guide to Case Study Research in Business-to-business Marketing and Purchasing (Advances in Business Marketing and Purchasing, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 255-270. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1069-096420140000021009
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014 Emerald Group Publishing Limited