Measuring workforce flexibility in service environments: a simulation-based approach

Despite of the constant attention raised by flexibility, its measure is still an under-developed subject. There is, in fact, a lack of direct measurements of flexibility and the validity of the existing ones is not always proven. To fill this gap, in this paper, we will illustrate a measure of flexibility and we will propose a simulation approach to validate the measure itself. This paper is therefore organized as follow; in the introduction we will illustrate the concept of flexibility; in section 2 we will illustrate an approach for measuring the potential flexibility of a system and an equation to measure the workforce flexibility in service; in section 3 we will develop a new measure able to quantify the actual flexibility of a system; in section 4 we will illustrate a methodology to assess the validity and the reliability of the proposed flexibility measures: finally, in section 5, we will point out some conclusions and we will illustrate the next research steps.