This paper presents a model and an analysis of the cost-flexibility tradeoffs involved in investing in product-flexible manufacturing capacity. Flexible capacity provides a firm with the ability to respond to a wide variety of future demand outcomes, but at the expense of the increased cost of...

We take advantage of recent advances in optimization methods and computer hardware to identify globally optimal solutions of product line design problems that are too large for complete enumeration. We then use this guarantee of global optimality to benchmark the performance of more practical...