Integration is Not Synonymous with Flexibility

Like productivity in the 1970s and quality in the 1980s, flexibility will be the popular operations and production management theme in the 1990s. Contrary to much of what is being written, warns that flexibility is not necessarily achieved through computer integration. Enthusiasm to embrace flexibility in order to achieve competitive advantage often leads to integration projects which are inadequately planned and under designed. Such projects do not result in true flexible integration but rather in what the author terms hard integration. Similar to the tooling in a hard automated system, the information interfaces in a hard integrated system are linked in a fixed and rigid manner. Hard integration reduces, not enhances, flexibility.