Investigations into Flexible Operational Paradigms to Mitigate Variability.

The work of this dissertation is concerned with the study of the effectiveness ofparadigms of production flexibility to either improve system performance or mitigatesystem risk. A brief introduction to the concept of operational flexibility is provided inChapter I. In Chapter II, we consider a cross-trained workforce on a serial productionline, and we introduce a new strategy of worker cross training called a “fixed task zonechain” (FTZC) as a special type of zone based cross training. This new approach seeksto maximize the performance of a production line, in the same fashion as a standard twoskill chain, but with a significant reduction in the number of skills that must be crosstrained. This allows a firm to maintain nearly the same levels of throughput, but ata fraction of the cross-training and implementation costs. Chapter III targets our study of operational flexibility on the field of supply chainmanagement. A flexible supply chain design is useful to mitigate the effect of stochasticsupplier disruptions on operations and, especially, financial cash flows. The workof this chapter develops mitigation strategies for a firm to use in sourcing from flexiblesuppliers and demonstrates the conditions under which flexibility in the firm’s supplychain is necessary. Finally, to assist with the understanding of the flexibility paradigms, we havedesigned an instrument to promote the understanding of flexibility with respect tocross-training as well as to assist in its implementation. That is, we develop a hands on,active learning experience placing participants “on the job” in a serial productionline of cross-trained workers where participants can: 1) learn basic concepts of operations management, production control, and workforce agility; 2) understand systemresponsiveness and what can be done to improve it; 3) generate creative thinking anddiscussion on the value of flexibility; and 4) experience first-hand foundational factoryphysics concepts like cycle time, throughput, and Work In Process (WIP).