Hossein Sharifi

A methodology for achieving agility in manufacturing organisations: An introduction

Abstract As we are approaching the 21st century, manufacturing success and survival are becoming more and more difficult to ensure. This fact is rooted in the emergence of a new business era that has “change” as one of its major characteristics. This critical situation has led to a major revision in the business priorities, strategic vision, and viability of conventional and even relatively contemporary models and methods developed so far. The emphasis is now on adaptability to change in the business environment and a proactive way of approaching to market and customer needs through newly evolved cooperation methods such as virtual organisation. The emerging paradigm is agile manufacturing, which in concept is a step forward in generation of new means for better performance and success of business, and in practice is a strategic approach to manufacturing, considering the new conditions of the business environment. Responding to changes, and taking advantage of them through strategic utilisation of managerial and manufacturing methods and tools, are the pivotal concepts of agile manufacturing. This paper discusses the concepts and the development of a methodology to achieve agility based on them. An introduction to the subject is given followed by a detailed discussion of the proposed methodology. In addition an empirical study is carried out to support and validate the proposed methodology. Some preliminary results of this study are reported as well.

Agile manufacturing in practice ‐ Application of a methodology

An evolutionary transformation of business environment, with change as a main characteristic, is taking place. Manufacturing companies, even those operating in relatively stable conditions with good market positions, are facing rapid and often unanticipated changes in their business environment. Agile manufacturing is proposed in response to the circumstances as a solution and is perceived as a vital characteristic that manufacturing companies need to have in order to maintain their competitive advantages in the new order of world business. Each company will respond in a specific and different way to the changing circumstances by deploying its own agile characteristics. Agility in manufacturing may be achieved through the implementation and integration of appropriate practices which provide the required abilities for a company to respond properly to changes. Based on this concept, a methodology for achieving agility in manufacturing organisations is developed. The methodology is applied in two manufacturing companies and data collected from the applications are used to validate the methodology. This paper provides a brief summary of the methodology and details its implementation and validation in the two case study companies. Practices are proposed to support the achievement of agility in the two organisations.

A methodology for achieving agility in manufacturing organisations

As we approach the twenty‐first century, manufacturing success and survival are becoming more and more difficult to ensure. This fact is rooted in the emergence of a new business era that embraces “change” as one of its major characteristics. The emphasis is now on adaptability to changes in the business environment and on addressing market and customer needs proactively. The emerging paradigm is agile manufacturing. Understanding and responding to changes, and taking advantage of changes through strategic utilisation of managerial and manufacturing methods and tools, are some of the pivotal concepts of agile manufacturing. This paper discusses these concepts and presents a methodology to assist manufacturing companies to achieve agility. Industrial questionnaire surveys and case studies are carried out to support and validate the methodology. Results and conclusions derived from the surveys and case studies in support of the methodology are reported.

A BALANCED APPROACH TO BUILDING AGILE SUPPLY CHAINS

Purpose – Parallel developments in the areas of agile systems and manufacturing, and supply chain management led to the introduction of the agile supply chains (ASC) concept. How to achieve agility in supply chain is, however, a subject of question and research. This paper proposes a framework for the development of ASC that is based on the integration of existing supply chain analysis and development models and techniques with those of the supply chain design (SCD) and also the design for the supply chain (DfSC).Design/methodology/approach – The framework mainly relies on research previously carried out by the authors in the areas of developing agile manufacturing and systems and models for demand network alignment. An extensive literature survey is carried out to support the ideas and derive the constructs of the conceptual model as a basis for further empirical research.Findings – The model suggest that responding proactively to the market and business environment changes, agility, can be facilitated b...

Achieving agility in supply chain through simultaneous “design of” and “design for” supply chain

Purpose – The two main constituting elements of the supply chains are “product” and “supply chain operations”, which are highly inter‐related across more than one dimension. Many of the drawbacks in the success and sustainability of supply chains often relate to the segregation of these dimensions. This paper seeks to examine the ideas and to propose an integrated approach to facilitate the dynamic and simultaneous design and development of products and supply chains, thus contributing to the notion of agile supply chains.Design/methodology/approach – Two critical areas of product design and development, and supply chain design and management have been studied, leading to the conceptual development of practical models for approaching the subject. The proposed framework then is examined in a field case study in which a number of issues raised in this paper are validated through observing these supply chains.Findings – A detailed view of the model of simultaneous approach to “design of” and “design for” sup...

Agile manufacturing: A management and operational framework

Abstract Manufacturing companies are now operating in fast-moving commercial environments where unanticipated threats and opportunities are the order of the day. Agile manufacturing in such environments means understanding the environment and being flexible, cost effective and productive with consistent high quality. Each company will respond in a different way to deploy its own agile characteristics. This paper describes research that tackles the problem of identifying what characteristics constitute agile manufacture and proposes a framework for evaluating and developing agile manufacturing. Manufacturing enterprises involve people, organization, technology, processes and information, and no commonly accepted practical reference framework exists to investigate, analyse and evaluate the ability to deal with change. The research is based on a wide-ranging review of agile manufacture and manufacturing architectures. From this review, a conceptual agile manufacturing model was developed and used in a study of 18 manufacturing companies. Subsequently, a framework for analysing and developing a companys agile characteristics is described. The paper concludes by discussing three case studies in detail and proposing the key characteristics of agile manufacturing.

The role of agile strategic capabilities in achieving resilience in manufacturing-based small companies

This article describes a practical ‘top-down’ strategic framework to assist manufacturing-based SMEs to develop a degree of resilience when operating in turbulent business environments. The approach builds on the premise that resilience occurs as a result of the implementation of both operational and strategic capabilities. The framework is based on earlier work in the area of manufacturing agility implementation in SMEs developed by the authors, and involves the integration of operational agility tools with tools and approaches from the strategic development literature. With the inclusion of a multi-strategy assessment tool, SMEs are able to prioritise their capabilities to achieve a level of ‘strategic readiness’. This article demonstrates how the approach is applied using two case studies carried out within two traditional manufacturing-based SMEs.

An empirical study of firm’s absorptive capacity dimensions, supplier involvement and new product development performance

Firms’ performance in their new product development (NPD) is believed to be positively related with involving suppliers in the process of new product development, and also with the organisation’s capacity and capability to absorb external and internal knowledge, namely absorptive capacity (AC). Addressing a gap in the literature, this study adopts the definition and structure for AC suggested by Tu et al. (2006) to examine relationships between AC’s sub-dimensions with NPD performance, and also their moderating effects on the relationship between supplier involvement and new product development performance, on both financial and nonfinancial aspects. Data from a survey of 161 manufacturing firms are used to test the developed hypotheses using structural equation modelling and hierarchical regression. Direct and contingent effects of supplier involvement and AC on new product development performance are studied. As a result factors determining AC are found of different level of effects on financial and nonfinancial performance of new products, which will have implication for theory and practice.

A classification and selection model of e‐marketplaces for better alignment of supply chains

Purpose – To provide a contingent framework for the classification and selection of e‐marketplaces has been developed.Design/methodology/approach – The framework is developed from a review of relevant literature and examined through conducting case studies, two of which are reported in the paper.Findings – A number of e‐business classification models are proposed. The key model dimensions considered are the nature of the products/services to be traded, the ownership/formation of the marketplace and the level of functionality/relationships exhibited by the trading exchange. The strategic role of an e‐marketplace is also identified as being dynamic in nature over the product/market lifecycle and the ongoing development of information systems and technologies.Research limitations/implications – The paper considers the power, relationship and behavioural aspects associated with the formation of e‐marketplaces but this is not the specific focus of the work undertaken.Practical implications – The cases demonstr...

Demand network alignment: aligning the physical, informational and relationship issues in supply chains

The aim of this paper is to propose a model for the inter-relationship and alignment of supply and demand networks from two perspectives namely the physical/operational (including information/knowledge systems), and the relationship/behavioural that affect collaborating partners. The two perspectives need to be considered simultaneously to realize the dynamics of supply chains and the issues affecting their management. The paper presents the development of the model on a conceptual level, and utilizes the data from a case study to depict the effect of these two perspectives in understanding supply chain dynamics.