Agility is a quality of timely response to changing conditions. For an organization, it is quickly and successfully adapting to change which may be in any area such as market, regulation, or technological advancement (Vernadat, 2001).
In the year 1991 the Iacocca Institute (in its vision document titled 21st Century Manufacturing Enterprise Strategy primarily created for the US industry) highlighted the need for an agile enterprise, which could operate efficiently and effectively in a rapid and unpredictable change environment. Such business environments are constantly changing and highly competitive (Bruce et al., 2004). The ultimate objective of the vision document was to encourage a transition from mass production to AM in pursuit of regaining the manufacturing leadership by the US industry (Küçük & Güner, 2014; Nagel & Dove, 1991).
In his book, Agile Manufacturing: The 21st Century Competitive Strategy, Gunasekaran (2001) describes AM as the capability of surviving and prospering in a competitive environment of continuous and unpredictable change by reacting quickly and effectively to changing markets, driven by customer-designed products and services. Critical to accomplishing AM are a few enabling technologies such as the standard for the exchange of products, concurrent engineering, virtual manufacturing, component-based hierarchical shop floor control system, and information and communication infrastructure (Gunasekaran, 2001).
According to Christopher and Towill (2001), “Agility is a business-wide capability that embraces organizational structures, information systems, logistics processes and in particular, mindsets.” Being flexible is a key characteristic of an agile enterprise. Hence, the roots of agility lie in the concept of flexible manufacturing systems (Christopher & Towill, 2001).
Initially, the manufacturing flexibility was limited in scope, and the key focus was on automation and rapid changeovers only enabling the manufacturing of orders with product mix or volume. In later years the concept of agility (flexibility) was extended to a larger business context (Nagel & Dove, 1991).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/agile-manufacturing-systems
Agility
Judging operations in terms of their agility has become popular. Agility is really a combination of all the five performance objectives, but particularly flexibility and speed. In addition, agility implies that an operation and the supply chain of which it is a part (supply chains are described in Chapter 6 ) can respond the uncertainty in the market. Agility means responding to market requirements by producing new and existing products and services fast and flexibly. (Nigel Slack, 7th ed., Ch.2, p54)
Lean and agile manufacturing: external and internal drivers and performance outcomes
Mattias Hallgren, Jan Olhager
International Journal of Operations & Production Management
ISSN: 0144-3577
Article publication date: 18 September 2009
Abstract
Purpose
Lean and agile manufacturing are two initiatives that are used by manufacturing plant managers to improve operations capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to investigate internal and external factors that drive the choice of lean and agile operations capabilities and their respective impact on operational performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Lean and agile manufacturing are each conceptualized as a second‐order factor and measured through a bundle of distinct practices. The competitive intensity of industry and the competitive strategy are modeled as potential external and internal drivers, respectively, and the impact on quality, delivery, cost, and flexibility performance is analyzed using structural equations modeling. The model is tested with data from the high performance manufacturing project comprising a total of 211 plants from three industries and seven countries.
Findings
The results indicate that lean and agile manufacturing differ in terms of drivers and outcomes. The choice of a cost‐leadership strategy fully mediates the impact of the competitive intensity of industry as a driver of lean manufacturing, while agile manufacturing is directly affected by both internal and external drivers, i.e. a differentiation strategy as well as the competitive intensity of industry. Agile manufacturing is found to be negatively associated with a cost‐leadership strategy, emphasizing the difference between lean and agile manufacturing. The major differences in performance outcomes are related to cost and flexibility, such that lean manufacturing has a significant impact on cost performance (whereas agile manufacturing has not), and that agile manufacturing has a stronger relationship with volume as well as product mix flexibility than does lean manufacturing.
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01443570910993456/full/html
Seven steps to a more resilient, agile manufacturing supply chain
2022 PWC Report
Published in European Journal of Management and Business Economics. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
1. Introduction
In the work of Abshire (1996), the concept was introduced. The concept of strategic agility has been used across a series of industries, and authors have related this research line with several topics and organisational areas.
Agility entails rapid responses to changes in the market.
Weill et al. (2002, p. 64) define agility as “the set of business initiatives an enterprise can readily implement”;
Sambamurthy et al. (2003, p. 238) describe agility as “the ability to detect and seize market opportunities with speed and surprise”;
Cohen et al. (2004) argue that being agile means delivering quickly and changing quickly and often; Da Silva et al. (2011) mention that agile methods help deal with growing complexity while reducing time to market;
Aronsson et al. (2011) assert that the focus of agility is being able to compete in a state of constant change and that agile organisations are those that swiftly respond to changes in demand.
Abshire discussed “a strategy of agility” around the US policy and how to maintain the country’s leadership in the world. This author explained that the strategic landscape after the Cold War was characterised by an information age that was unpredictable and unstable. Thus, the US needed to use a strategy that was agile enough to seize opportunities and protect against threats (Abshire, 1996).
some authors used the terminology “business agility” in relation to strategy and the competitive advantage of a firm.
Mathiassen and Pries-Heje (2006) assert that agility is fundamental when planning business strategy and, to be properly implemented, agility must be aligned with the information technology (IT) strategy. These authors highlight the idea that the main path to maintain the competitive strategy is designing an agile business.
Van Oosterhout et al. (2006) focus their research on explaining how the business environment is highly dynamic and that businesses need to be not only flexible but also agile. Thus, business agility is defined as the capability of a firm to rapidly transform business models and processes beyond regular “flexibility” to respond to unpredictable external threats with successful internal changes.
Hendriyani and Raharja (2019) even use the expression “business agility strategy” to define the capacity of a Fintech start-up to detect opportunities and threats and develop an appropriate response.
Doz and Kosonen (2010) similarly relate strategic agility to the ability to transform and renew business models.
Ekman and Angwin (2007) refer to strategic agility as an acknowledgement of “the ever-increasing complexity and turbulence of their environments by developing requisite capabilities of flexibility and responsiveness”;
Lewis et al. (2014, describe it as “flexible, mindful responses to constantly changing environments”;
Weber and Tarba (2014, p. 5) pertain to strategic agility as the “ability to remain flexible in facing new developments, to continuously adjust the company's strategic direction, and to develop innovative ways to create value”;
Denning (2018, p. 119) argues that “strategic agility is generating innovations that create entirely new markets by turning non-customers into customers”;
Clauss et al. (2020, p. 3) refer to strategic agility as “a firm's ability to renew itself continuously and to maintain flexibility without compromising efficiency”.
Sambamurthy et al. (2003) relate agility with ambidexterity,
Ananthram and Nankervis (2013) argue that strategic agility is synonymous with other topics such as dynamic capabilities.
Ambidexterity pertains to the organisation’s ability to exploit its current capabilities while simultaneously exploring new competencies (Raisch et al., 2009; O'Reilly and Tushman, 2013; Pasamar, 2019; Vargas et al., 2021).
Regarding dynamic capabilities, they are defined as the firm’s ability to integrate, build and reconfigure internal competencies to address changes in the business environment (Teece, 2017; Schilke, 2018). Accordingly, strategic agility is considered a meta-capability that combines several dynamic capabilities (Ahammad et al., 2021; Shams et al., 2021; Nyamrunda and Freeman, 2021).
In this sense, Doz and Kosonen (2010) and Clauss et al. (2021) propose that strategic agility is formed as a combination of strategic sensitivity, leadership unity and resource fluidity;
Hock et al. (2016) and Ivory and Brooks (2018) also include strategic sensitivity, resource fluidity but considers collective commitment as the third dynamic capability that forms part of strategic agility.
The purpose of this study is to analyse the evolution of strategic agility over the 1996–2021 period, attempting to identify a comprehensive definition and the key themes in this field, which have drawn the attention of the research community, and the gaps in the literature.
The objective of our paper is threefold. First, we aim to understand the level of maturity of the topic of study. In other words, we intend to ascertain whether this topic is a growing one in the literature or whether it has started to plateau. We also seek to verify the degree of homogeneity of the distributions of authors and journals to explore for other authors the feasibility of publishing on this topic.
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/EJMBE-05-2021-0160/full/html
Agility of a Business Organization and Its Performance - McKinsey & Other Top Management Consultants
http://www.cse.lehigh.edu/~rnn0/bio/summary.html
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