Abstract
This paper formalizes the notion of flexibility in sequential decision making and investigates conditions under which the use of flexibility as an additional criterion may be justified. The correlations between flexibility and value, and flexibility and risk, are studied under various assumptions of uncertainty and information. A number of approaches to constructing a multiple objective decision criterion are discussed. In particular, characteristics of a dual-objective value function, that accounts for both expected value and flexibility, are described. The usefulness of these results is illustrated by applying them to decision processes in discrete part manufacturing. Relationships between flexibility and manufacturing performance are shown and implications to part flow control are discussed.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 438-457 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | European Journal of Operational Research |
| Volume | 82 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 4 1995 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The research of the authors was supported in part by the Purdue Research Foundation, Purdue's University Research Initiative in Computational Combinatorics: ONR contract No. N00014-86-K-0689 and the National Science Foundation: grant No. DDM-9309631.
Keywords
- Decision theory
- Flexibility
- Flexible manufacturing systems
- Multi criteria analysis
