Scalability.

In manufacturing scalability is a word widely mentioned, but for this project, multiple definitions will be mentioned to create a consensus as for the scope the word will have in this project.

First, in software engineering, Weinstock, C. B., & Goodenough, J. B. (2006) from Carnegie Mellon University provided two definitions on their On scalability work.

Scalability is the ability to handle increased workload (without adding resources to a system).
Scalability is the ability to handle increased workload by repeatedly applying a costeffective strategy for extending a system’s capacity.

There is an agreement about the capacity to increase the workload as the most important factor in scalability.

Second, in manufacturing, Wang, W., & Koren, Y. (2012) define scalability as the capability of manufacturing systems to adapt their throughputs to changing demands.

Similarly Koren, Y., & Shpitalni, M. (2010) define scalability as the ability to easily modify production capacity by adding or subtracting manufacturing resources (e.g. machines) and/or changing components of the system.

Finally Spicer, P., Yip-Hoi, D., & Koren, Y. (2005) state the following:

A basic concept of scalability in manufacturing systems is dated to the early 1980s (Browneet al.1984, Sethi and Sethi 1990, Abdel-Malek and Wolf 1993). At that time the term for scalability was expansion flexibility and this original term is found in flexible machine systems (FMS) literature.

The specific definition given for scalability in Korenet al.(1998) is ‘the ability to adjust the production capacity of a system through system reconfiguration with minimal cost, in minimal time, over a large capacity range, at given capacity increments’.

Therefore our definition for scalability is:

Scalability is a system’s or device’s ability to modify their Key Performance Indicators (KPI) as a function of a set of controlled variables, such as size, module quantity, component quality, etc.

Here’s a footnote ¹.

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