Changeability in Operations: a Critical Strategic Resource for European Manufacturing?

Changeability has become a buzzword for operations management, especially in German literature. Therefore, we analyze the concept in comparison with existing concepts for variability, such as flexibility and agility. Agility is an enterprise-wide concept incorporating product design as well as manufacturing systems design and aiming at lean and often dislocated manufacturing processes. Flexibility means that an operation system is variably within a specific combination of in-, out and throughput. Changeability, in contrast, means the ability of an operation system to alter autonomously the configuration to meet new, previously unknown demands e. g. from the market. Changeability is then the ability to realize new states of the in-, outand throughput. Additionally, the reconfiguration of the system has to be realized as quickly as the environmental changes. Therefore, to be changeable, the speed of adaptation is important.