Could you clarify by elaborating a bit on your question? In particukar, what do you mean by "flexibility techniques?"

Here is a pointer to a research work targeting agricultural production systems but probably applicable to manufacturing systems.

http://carlit.toulouse.inra.fr/wikiz/images/a/a6/MODSIM2011rmcjpr.pdf

adapting felxibility in a manufacturing operations by doing multi tasks without affecting the time gap .

We have studied flexibility in the design of buildings, not FMS, but some fundamental principles should apply equally. Flexibility means investing in functionality that may (or may not) be used at some time in the future. The initial investment cost is usually easy to quantify, but the benefits are harder to quantify - but they must be higher than the investment to justify the investment. The benefits are probabilistic. The concept of real options provide a key to quantification. We use Monte Carlo simulation in preference to other techniques and have developed software called CILECCTA in collaboration with partners in an EC-funded research project - see www.cileccta.eu

See also my paper 'Investing in flexibility' in the MIT journal 'Projections' (vol.10, 2011).

http://dusp.mit.edu/project/projections-10-designing-growth-and-change

www.cileccta.eu

The main goal of a flexible manufacturing system is to offer the speed needed to change with market conditions quickly, but not sacrifice any quality. Speed or flow rate, system flexibility; packaging, palletizing & storage requirements &  maintenance issues are included in some of the flexibility measurement techniques in FMS.

There are several flexibilities defined in an FMS, most of them can be measured. For example, machine flexibility is the ability of a machine to process several operations on several products without a big change in time and cost. So to measure this flexibility, one can count the number of different operations and/or different products or a combination of the two.

the ability to route the work components to the particular machines without affecting the time also quality of work.

The attributes for measuring machine flexibility can be processing time, processing cost, setup time, and quality output. These flexibility attributes can be measured for single-machine, machine group, or a flow line with machine configuration. The measuring idea is similar to criteria provided by Dr. Sari discussed above.

Flexibility attributes mentionned by Dr Tsung-Nan Tsai can be used to investigate the variation in processing cost and time for different operation and different products. Hence for a defined interval of processing cost and time, one can count the number of different operations and/or products. But according to my knowledge, setup time deals with product flexibility  not machine flexibility. (the ability to switch production from one product to another).  This is due to the fact that setup time depends mainly on previous and following product types to be processed.

This is smth. like, perfect settings for constant processing equipments , and results are high quality products with low production outlays! 

Most important thing for your quostion, is the human capacity to undarstand progressively best technologies with propper automatisation settings on working wquipment!