Variety is free: Manufacturing in the twenty-first century
研究了企业投资柔性制造系统时，需重新设计信息流、知识运用和组织结构，才能通过持续学习和知识创造获得可持续竞争优势。
Executive Overview Many firms invest in the physical tooling, computer hardware, and control software of flexible manufacturing without understanding how these systems require a redefining of information flows, knowledge use and organization structure. Smooth implementation and growing competence in applying advanced manufacturing and information technologies depend on the firm's cultivation of organizational practices that encourage continuous organizational learning and knowledge-creating activities. However, competitive advantage is likely to result only when managers understand the need to redesign their organizations to exploit the full benefits of the new technology. By integrating new technology with innovative and more flexible organization designs, manufacturing firms may be able to create and sustain levels of strategic flexibility and customer responsiveness that competitors will find difficult to imitate and customers will find difficult to abandon. In turn, we believe that this will lead to more sustainable competitive advantage.