Managing Flexibility in Manufacturing and Operations : A Case Study in the Indian Context

The objective of this paper is to present the result and critical analysis of a case study conducted on Rail Coach Factory (RCF) Kapurthala, which is one of the largest engineering companies in India in the Government sector, engaged in manufacturing coaches for the railways. The electronics-enabled revolution has brought about rapid changes in not only the corporate and business world, but has also resulted in changing the social and cultural patterns globally.The manufacturing industry is no exception and has seen much advancement in manufacturing technology during the last few decades. The advent of Flexible Manufacturing Technology (FMT) is one such revolution. Although the diffusion of FMT is fairly substantial in Japan and other developed nations, especially in the USA, UK, Germany, Sweden, Italy, and france; In India, the technology is in the nascent stage of take off. This study is a part of an exhaustive survey covering aspects related to the current and likely future state of adoptionand operation of FMT in the Indian context. Various aspects covered in the study include the company profile, its FMT environment, the strategic factors contributing to the choice of FMT equipment, impacts of FMT on the technical and oganizational systems of the company, and so on. A Situation-Actor-Process (SAP) analysis is carried out leading to the identification of learning issues and conclusions.