Method for Achieving Agility in Manufacturing Industry

8/8/2019 Method for Achieving Agility in Manufacturing Industry

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extended to other aspects of scale and scope of

business economy in the past two decades. These

aspects include market, competition, customer re-

quirements, social factors, etc., that have been sub-

ject to relentless and overwhelming changes. Such

changes, which had already resulted in frequent

evolution of business systems and the creation ofnew manufacturing and management philosophies,

are shown to be occurring faster and more unex-

pectedly in recent years than ever. The perceived

radical trend of change has made ground for some

new suggestions about the emergence of a new

business era beyond the traditional systems such as

mass production or even lean production.

Competition basis, which used to be the prod-

uct's price, has moved to quality, delivery time, and

"nally customer choice or in a more exact way,

customer satisfaction. The prevailing strategy of

economy of scales has been challenged by the new

vision of economy of scope. Mass productionsystems are being seriously questioned for their

viability in challenging the changing nature of the

business environment. The new methods that have

been used to cure the problems in productivity of

traditional systems, such as #exible manufacturing

and lean manufacturing and all techniques and

tools associated to them, are found insu$cient in

the way they have been managed and utilised.From late 1980s into 1990s, and following

widespread economic and political changes over

the world, a great amount of e!orts have been

directed to understand the roots and causes of the

new orders in the world business. USA "rst led the

movement as they felt a substantial loss in the

world share of business, especially in manufactur-

ing industry where they were confronted by new

rivals from Asia and Europe. It then became the

concern of Europe as well, as they did not see

themselves "t into the new order of business, espe-

cially considering the vast foreseen change over thecontinent.

Academic groups and funded research institutes

world wide have carried out research programmes

in order to understand and diagnose the roots,

causes and e!ects of the new business circumstances.

Clark and Fujimoto [5] conducted a "ve year

study of product development process world wide

and reported new forces that drive the new indus-

trial competition. These are known to be: the

emergence of intense international competition; the

creation of fragmented markets populated by de-

manding, sophisticated customers; and diverse

change in transforming technology. They believe

that the role of new products goes well beyond

fascination it used to evoke, and has become a focalpoint of industrial competition. Another outstand-

ing e!ort that was conducted by a group from

Iacocca Institute in USA resulted in a report in

1991 [6]. The report that soon became a focal point

of manufacturing system studies, stated that a new

competitive environment is emerging which is act-

ing as a driving force for change in manufacturing.

It argues that the new foundations of the competi-

tion criteria are: continuous change, rapid

response, quality improvement, and social respons-

ibility. The research that was pursued under Agility

Forum in Bethelham University, then introduced

drivers of manufacturing business towards the newform of competition, and called this new concept

agile manufacturing. These drivers are competition,

fragmentation of mass market, cooperative produc-

tion relationship, evolving customer expectations,

and increasing social pressures.

These works have been supported by a number

of studies that addressed the subject of change and

the methods to cope with chaos and uncertainty.Davis [7] has stressed that the biggest problem for

executive today is change } responding to external

and managing internal changes. Authors such as

Clemson [8], Graves [9] and Hall [10] have talked

about the desirability and di$culty of handling

changes. Drucker [11] has outlined that dramatic

advances in technology has also changed the way

people work, and made modern types of enterprise

possible. Hayen [3] has seen the challenge of

change to emerge due to technological turbulence,

the all-pervasive nature of microelectronics, the

trend towards globalisation, and changes in com-petitive relationships. Souder and Moenart [12]

have identi"ed four sources of uncertainty which

are: consumer, competitor, technology, and re-

sources. Bessant et al. [13] have indicated that

alongside other changes, there have been the devel-

opment in manufacturing methods that in a total

combination have formed a mesh of competi-

tive threats and opportunities for manufacturing

8 H. Sharix , Z. Zhang/Int. J. Production Economics 62 (1999) 7}22


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companies. They also consider the interaction of all

changing factors as a dynamic, complex and recur-

sive set that could be seen as both driving and

enabling change in manufacturing. McCann and

Selsky [14] have de"ned a new type of uncertainty

which is called hyperturbulent or type 5 and is the

overall e!ect of changing factors in the formation ofthe new business environment. Maull and Tran"eld

et al. [15] have recognised that manufacturing

companies especially SMEs are often faced with

competitive pressures such as rapidly decreasing

lead time, more and more choices o!ered by com-

petitors, pricing, and new entries to market espe-

cially from the new industrialised countries (NICs).

Levary [16] has put forward a set of external vari-

ables in four categories: competition, economic

environment, customer taste, and unpredictable

occurrences in the marketplace. He de"nes these as

variables that are not subject to management con-

trol. Iansiti [17] emphasises that the needs of thenascent customer base, the number of competitors,

and the range of technological possibilities are all

characterised by frequent and substantial change,

which creates new challenges for organisations.

Rothwell [18] stresses that not only is techno-

logy changing rapidly, but the process of the

commercialisation of technological change, the

industrial innovation process, is changing aswell.

All the mentioned works focused on the rapid

trend of change in the manufacturing area and the

necessity of employing new visions, and revisiting

the traditional philosophies and mindsets. They

encourage a di!erent approach beyond the conven-

tional models, that can provide manufacturing or-

ganisations with the ability to respond positively to

the changing circumstances and taking advantage

of them. This would only be achieved by changing

the way manufacturers look at their business, their

relationships with customers and suppliers, andtheir cooperation with competitors. The new mind-

set required for this purpose should support a new

strategic vision beyond the conventional systems

and move to new dimensions of competition rather

than only cost and quality. Surviving and prosper-

ing in this turbulent situations will be possible if

organisations have the essential capabilities to

recognise and understand their changing environ-

ments and respond in a proper way to every unex-

pected change. Also, opportunistic actions in

capturing new markets and responding to new

customer requirements is another important

feature necessary for success in the contemporary

form of the business environment.

The opinions on how manufacturing companiescould succeed is so diverse that a general consensus

could hardly be reached. Emphasis on new priori-

ties of business such as time (achieving speed in

delivery and lead time) and #exibility, deploying

new technologies (AMT, etc.) and methods, tools

and techniques, utilisation of information sys-

tem/technology and data interchange facilities,

more concern on organisational issues and people

(knowledgeable and empowered workers), integra-

tion of whole business process, enhancing innova-

tion all over the company, virtual organisation and

cooperation, production based on customer order

(mass-customisation), etc., are some but a fewto name of regularly suggested solutions for in-

creasing the ability of an organisation in respon-

ding to change and maintaining the competitive

advantage.

In summary, it could be concluded that the main

issue in this new area of manufacturing manage-

ment is the ability to cope with unexpected cha-

nges, to survive unprecedented threats of businessenvironment, and to take advantage of changes as

opportunities. This ability is called agility or agile

manufacturing.

Agile manufacturing that was sometimes mixed

up and confused with previous thought schools of

manufacturing management such as #exibility and

lean manufacturing has been backed for having

novel concepts beyond the former remedies. This

has happened thanks to the wide concern it re-

ceived during the past few years, though in place

this has been a natural result of the increasing need

to resolve problems with the so-called remedies andincreasing pressures on manufacturing companies

in competing for success. Works by Youssef [19],

Brooke [20], Richards [21], Ward [22], Dove [23],

Kidd [24], Goldman et al. [25], Preiss et al. [26],

and Preiss [27,28], Baker [29], have been aimed at

crystallising the concepts and shed light on it in

order to make it distinguishable from other

methods.

H. Sharix , Z. Zhang/Int. J. Production Economics 62 (1999) 7}22 9


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Fig. 1. The generic model [25].

Agility in concept comprises two main factors.

They are:

E Responding to change (anticipated or unex-

pected) in proper ways and due time.E Exploiting changes and taking advantage of

them as opportunities.

These, indeed necessitate a basic ability that is

sensing, perceiving and anticipating changes in the

business environment of the company.

An agile manufacturer, in this way is an organ-

isation with a broad vision on the new order of the

business world, and with a handful of capabilitiesand abilities to deal with turbulence and capture

the advantageous side of the business. Until now,

the proposals towards becoming agile and the char-

acteristics de"ned for an agile manufacturer are

more or less expressed in a Utopian way. On the

other hand, although no businesses have been re-

ported to possess all the required speci"cations of

agility, a number of evidences of approaches for

newly minded strategies and practices have made

ground for providing some realistic and applicable

models.

Preiss et al. [26], have prompted a new under-standing of cooperation as a vital means of survival

and prosperity in the new era of business, and have

put forward a generic model of approaching agility.

The model, as a generic methodological approach

to management of business, has also been ad-

dressed by other works in the "eld of manufactur-

ing, including the research by Maull and Tran"eld

et al. [15].

The generic model of Preiss et al. [26] is depicted

in Fig. 1. It consists of some steps that could lead

the company to understand its business environ-

ment and changes taking place there, the attributes,

enabling infrastructure, and "nally business pro-cesses that should be recognised in the further

actions of the organisation in order to sustain the

competitive advantage.

The mentioned model has been considered in

an ongoing research work in the University of

Liverpool that is aimed at exploiting the concept

and practices of agility, and developing a methodo-

logy towards agility. The next section will discussthe research work and its achievements in details.

2. The research methodology

Based on the literature survey, a pilot question-

naire survey and some industrial interviews, an

initial structure and conceptual model of agility

was developed. It was then used as a platform for

a questionnaire survey of manufacturing industries,

that mostly aimed at three speci"c sectors. The

results have supported the research hypotheses andthe previously achieved understandings, which

alongside a deep contemplation of the concepts

have led to the proposal of a methodological

approach for achieving agility.

The perceived hypotheses, the conceptual model,

the proposed methodology and some preliminary

"ndings of the research will form the following

parts of the paper.



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Fig. 2. A conceptual model of agility.

It is expected to turn the introduced methodo-

logy into a practical self-assessing model that could

be utilised as a tool for manufacturing companies in

attempt to becoming agile as a new condition of

surviving in the new business world. This would be

in hand only after the completion of further steps of

the research.

3. Research hypotheses

E Agility is an ability and a character that every

manufacturing company must have to be able to

survive and prosper in the new order of the

world business environment.E Di!erent organisations are di!erent in the way

they should respond to changing business envi-

ronment, so they need di!erent levels of agility.E Agility is a response to the changes that a com-

pany faces, and shall become a characteristic ofthe company. Therefore, the way that the com-

pany should act in turbulent circumstances of

the business environment, which is called agility,

is a direct function of changes in the business

environment, and also the business environment

itself and the company's situation.

E Agility in concept is a strategic response to the

new criteria of the business world, and in prac-tice, is a strategic utilisation of business methods,

manufacturing and management processes, prac-

tices and tools, most of which are already

developed and used by industries for certain pur-

poses, and some are under development to facil-

itate the capabilities that are required for being

agile.

E Information system/technology in its utmost

level of timeliness, coverage, communicationability, data banking and interchange, etc., is

a major di!erentiator of an agile manufacturing

company compared to traditional systems.

4. The conceptual model and the methodology

Considering these hypotheses, "rst a conceptual

model was derived from literature. The model is

shown in Fig. 2. It consists of three main parts.

First is the agility drivers which are the changes in

the business environment that drive the company

to a new position in running their business andsearching for competitive advantage. According to

literature (e.g. [24,25]), this would urge the com-

pany to revisit the company's strategy and recon-

struct it, in which becoming agile is considered

seriously. The agility capabilities are the second

part that propose the essential headlines of abilities

that would provide the required strength for

responding to changes, and "nally the agilityproviders that are the means by which the so-called

capabilities could be achieved and are supposed to



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be sought from four major areas of the manufactur-

ing environment. These areas are organisation,

people, technology, and innovation. Also, it is

strongly believed that creation of the mentioned

providers would not be possible without attempts to

integrate the whole set, and also without a powerful

support of information system/technology.Based on this model and the empirical work

performed in the research programme, a methodo-

logy has been developed to provide manufacturing

companies with a realistic tool for better under-

standing of the total concept of agility, determining

their agility need, assessing their current position,

determining the capabilities required in order to

become agile, and adopting relevant practices

which could bring about the recognised capabili-

ties. The graphical form of this methodology is

depicted in Fig. 3, and will be expressed in detail in

the following.

Business environment as the source of turbulenceand change impose pressures on the business activ-

ities of the company. These uncertainties, unpredic-

ted changes, and pressures urge manufacturing

organisations to approach appropriate ways that

could lead them to a stable position and protect

them from losing their competitive advantage.

These are called, as mentioned earlier, agility

drivers. These drivers could vary from one com-pany to another and from one situation to another,

and therefore the way they a!ect a company could

vary as well. This would necessitate a mechanism

or a method to detect and recognise the changes in

the business environment.

As mentioned in the research hypotheses, com-

panies are di!erent in the way they face changes

and the consequences of these changes. A company

with a sole market or an established and guaran-

teed share of the market, or in a stable and low

competitive market, or with customers that do not

put much pressure on them in terms of ordersquantity, delivery time or quality enjoys a business

with much less risk of loss and problem than a com-

pany that lives in an environment of opposite fea-

tures as mentioned. So it can be argued that there

are di!erences in the way companies must respond

to changes, which is de"ned as the agility need level.

The question there will be how agile the company

needs to be. According to assumptions made

earlier, this level is a result of di!erent factors such

as turbulence of the business environment, the envi-

ronment that the company competes in, the charac-

teristics of the company itself, etc. A method is

needed to evaluate the mentioned level for the

company as a basis for further actions. This method

that is developed and examined to some extent willbe explained later.

Once the company recognised the level of its

agility needs, it should be able to assess itself for the

level of agility it already has. Although there is still

no established work in this subject as a reference,

according to the basic de"nitions used in the meth-

odology, a preliminary method is being developed

to assist companies. The model will consist of gen-

eral factors such as: how responsive is the

company against changes in its business environ-

ment, how able is the company in proactively

capturing the market and customers desire and

in taking the competitive advantage of un-predicted opportunities in the market, etc. Each

of these general questions and factors could be

subdivided into sub-factors in place to establish

a measure for estimating the current strength and

abilities of the company in terms of agility.

This part of the methodology will be extended to

achieve the required measurement tool later in the

research.The outcome of a gap analysis following the

above steps would provide various options to the

speci"c company in the way of"nding its position

regarding agility and becoming agile. The options

could be: (a) the company do not need to be agile,

(b) the company is agile enough to respond to

changes it might face in future, (c) the company

needs to take action in order to become agile but

not as an urgent agenda for the company, or (d) the

company needs to be agile and it needs it fast and

strongly.

As assumed, agility is a strategic approach to-wards success with regard to the new and di!erent

rules and circumstances of the modern and perhaps

post-modern business environment. Therefore,

a strategic intent to become agile is vital to make

the required ground for further steps.

The next step will be action towards becoming

agile, which consists of some steps that could be

optional according to the speci"c circumstances of



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Fig. 3. The methodology to become agile.

the company, and the agility need level and the type

of agility drivers it deals with. This part will be

discussed in detail later. But in relation with the

methodology, the action step will consist of two

parts: agility capabilities, and agility practices, that

in an interaction with the agility drivers will form

a practical approach for a company to take agility

into its characteristics.



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Fig. 4. The scoring model for determining agility need level.

4.1. A model for determining agility need level

In this model a series of factors are considered as

measures, that could form a foundation for assess-

ing the turbulence of the environment and the spe-

ci"c conditions of the company. These factors are

used to determine an estimation of the importance,

severity, and urgency of approaching abilities for

becoming agile. This will appear in the form of

a scoring model that is shown in Fig. 4. The pro-

posed factors will be assessed and scored based on

its turbulence and/or the impact it would have on

the company's performance as a factor of pressures

from outside environment or an internal element

that makes the circumstances more harsh and

severe for the company, such as complexity of the



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product development process. The scoring is de-

signed so that each score represents a proportional

rate of the factors with regard to the highest pos-

sible level in that speci"c area. This will provide the

possibility of taking the average score of the total

items as a measure of the agility need level. The

outcomes are speci"c to individual companies andwould not be a comparative measure for the com-

pany's position relative to its competitors or other

companies.

As mentioned earlier, the method is examined in

the conducted questionnaire survey. A comparison

between the extracted results from the survey and

the perception of the companies regarding their

real agility need, that was asked as a separate

question with referring to the provided de"nition in

the questionnaire's attachment, has shown an en-

couraging support for credibility of the model.

5. Agility drivers, agility capabilities and agility

practices

After the initial evaluation of the company's agil-

ity need level and its current agility level, a com-

pany should take the following steps to put agility

into action, and make itself agile, as reasoned

above:

1. detect, analyse and recognise the change(s);

2. determine the required capabilities to challenge

and overcome the change(s);

3. de"ne the required strategy(ies), if necessary;

4. determine the practice(s) or initiative(s) that

could help in achieving the required capabilities,

and put them in the company's action plan;

5. measure and evaluate its performance in agility;

6. make correction based on the performancemeasurement results.

A framework is being developed to assist the com-

pany in this relation. This framework attempts to

provide the following facilities:

1. A classi"cation of the various changes that could

happen in the business environment of the com-

pany. This will help to generalise the model for

every company and simplify the process of re-

cognising the type of change and the capabilities

required for recovering them.

2. A classi"cation of capabilities that would be

required and are vital in responding to changes.

3. An associated list of practices, initiatives,

methods and tools for gaining the required

capabilities. This would provide guidance forchoosing the practices and put them in the com-

pany's action plan.

4. A tool for processing the model, that will include

proposition of associated capabilities to each

class of change.

5.1. Agility drivers } a classi,cation

The number of changes and their type, speci"ca-tion or characteristic could not be easily deter-

mined and probably is inde"nite. Di!erent

companies with di!erent characteristics and in dif-

ferent circumstances would experience di!erent

changes that are speci"c and perhaps unique to

themselves. A change that may be a harmful inci-

dent for a company may not be bad for another

company or even the same company in a di!erent

situation. It could even be an opportunity in a dif-

ferent time or place. But there are common charac-

teristics in changes that occur, which could bring

about a general consequence for every company.

This could provide a basis for suggestion of somecategories that would lead to a generalisation of the

concept. Based on other works in this regard and

outcomes from this research we suggest three ways

of categorisation. The "rst is the general areas of

change, the next is a detailed list of common and

inclusive changes as sub-items of the general areas

which are more or less faced by manufacturing

companies, and the third is from the way thatchange can a!ect the company.

The "rst and the second categories are as

follows.

1. Changes in Market; including items such as:

growth of the niche market,

national and international political changes,

increasing rate of change in product models,

product lifetime shrinkage.



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2. Changes in Competition criteria; including items

such as:

rapidly changing market,

increasing pressure on cost,

increasing rate of innovation,

increasing pressure of global market competi-

tion, decreasing new products time to market,

responsiveness of competitors to changes.

3. Changes in Customer requirements; including

items such as:

demand for individualised products and servi-

ces,

quicker delivery time and time to market,

quality expectation increasing,

sudden changes in order quantity and speci-

"cation.

4. Changes in echnology; including items such as:

introduction of more e$cient, faster, and eco-

nomic production facilities,

introduction of new soft technologies (soft-

ware and methods),

inclusion of information technology in new

hard technologies.

5. Changes in Social factors; including items such

as: environmental pressures,

workforce/workplace expectations,

legal/political pressures,

cultural problems,

social contract changes.

For the third way of categorisation we begin with

this idea that changes could happen to a!ect

a manufacturing company in various ways. It

could:

1. A!ect the current activities, programmes and

plans of the company. These e!ects will be re-ceived mostly by the bottom line of the manufac-

turing process in the form of change in order

quantity and/or delivery time, product speci"ca-

tion, model or con"guration, required services

and support for the products, also problems

with e!ective completion of the product line

schedule due to supplier problems. These

changes can a!ect factors such as:

economic "gures of the company's business

such as sales, pro"t, ROI,2,

current production plans and schedules of

product lines,

manufacturing process, procedures, and pol-

icies,

organisational processes and procedures, orders in process in quantity, delivery

time,2,

new products in the process of development,

support and services on products.

2. A!ect company's business by endangering its

position in market for some speci"c products or

in some speci"c sectors of the market. Changes

in competition rules and methods, new entran-

ces to market, policies and social changes, and

market pressures are some aspects of this type ofproblems. Some factors that might receive e!ect

from these types of change are:

market share of the company for one or more

speci"c products,

market share of the company in some speci"c

sectors of the market, total position of the company in the market, reputation of the company and trust of cus-

tomers/suppliers/partners in company, and

hence the relationship between them.

3. Create new horizons of opportunity for the com-

pany through introduction of new markets, an

instant tendency in customers and market, fall of

main competitors, a totally novel and innovative

idea for products and services, etc. Some factors

that would receive e!ect are: future plans of the company for expansion

and growth, and investment, new product introduction policy and market

sectors it could present, plans for collaboration and joint venturing.

Based on these circumstances, we may categorise

the changes into three domains, each requiring

a di!erent type or level of response and hence

di!erent capabilities to respond to change.

The "rst domain, explained above as changes

that impact current activities and plans of the com-

pany, requires an immediate response and reaction

that results in recovery from that change. Based on



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the speci"c circumstances, di!erent capabilities

may be required for making the response and re-

covery possible.

The second domain, that refers to problems

facing the company regarding their position in the

market, requires at the "rst order an overview of

the company's strategy in areas such as marketing,pricing, manufacturing, support and services, etc.

Based on this review, the capabilities required to

respond to the changes will be recognised and ap-

propriate actions will be taken which could consist

of the current activities of the company and its

internal processes and policies. This would indeed

necessitate the observation and action in the pre-

vious domain as well.

The third domain that is considered to bring

about new opportunities and make the company

change its direction of business and the strategies

adopted towards success, requires a review of the

total strategy of the company in order to draw thefuture lines of the business as a "rst step. The

required capabilities to enhance the new drawn

paths of the company's future movements will be

recognised and the two previous domains, espe-

cially the "rst one, would also be taken into ac-

count and investigated if the speci"c change would

a!ect the criteria of those domains.

Fig. 5 shows a simple form of interaction andpriority in the categorisation of three domains.

This model will help us to direct every change

that occurs in the business environment of a com-

pany to a certain level of need to consideration of

proper response, strategy amendment, and new

strategy building.

What makes the company able to realise cor-

rectly the type of change it faces, is the ability to

sense, perceive and anticipate changes. This is

a `musta for any manufacturer that wants to be

agile and stand in a trustworthy position, whatever

the required level of agility is.There are some MUST(s) for each level that

should be taken into consideration by manufac-

turers. These are the basic movements to receive

and perceive the changes, make a rapid response to

it (if necessary), review and re-evaluate the company's

business strategy and/or operational strategies.

As the change could be in a wide range of var-

ieties and may di!er from one situation to another,

Fig. 5. Domains of change e!ects.

and also from one company to another, there will

be optional alternatives for the required capabili-

ties that should be clari"ed, measured for its level of

impact and importance, veri"ed for its position in

the company, and a decision be made for approach-

ing it through relevant practices.

5.2. Agility capabilities

The capabilities that an agile organisation

should have to be able to make appropriate re-

sponse to changes taking place in its business envi-

ronment, are basically divided into four major

categories. These are:

Responsiveness: Which is the ability to identify

changes and respond fast to them, reactively orproactively, and recover from them. This has been

itemised as follows:

E sensing, perceiving and anticipating changes,E immediate reaction to change by e!ecting them

into system,E recovery from change.

Competency: Which is the extensive set of abil-

ities that provide productivity, e$ciency, and e!ec-

tiveness of activities towards the aims and goals ofthe company. Following items form the capability

structure:

E strategic vision,

E appropriate technology (hard and soft), or su$-

cient technological ability,

E products/services quality,

E cost e!ectiveness,

E high rate of new products introduction,

E change management,



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E knowledgeable, competent, and empowered

people,

E operations e$ciency and e!ectiveness (leanness),

E cooperation (internal and external),

E integration.

Flexibility: Which is the ability to process di!er-

ent products and achieve di!erent objectives with

the same facilities. It consists of items such as:

E product volume #exibility,E product model/con"guration #exibility,E organisation and organisational issues #exibility,E people #exibility.

Quickness: Which is the ability to carry out tasks

and operations in the shortest possible time. This

will include items such as:

E quick new products time to market,E products and services delivery quickness and

timeliness,E fast operations time.

5.3. Agility practices

The mentioned capabilities are typical manage-

ment issues that have been under study and devel-

opment for years. Most of them are the general

initiatives that have been approached in di!erentways. These ways are the practices, models,

methods, and tools that could be practised in di!er-

ent levels of the organisation, from top managerial

decision and strategy making to shop #oor tech-

niques for operations improvement. There are

some methods and tools referred to as agile tech-

niques that have been developed very recently or

under construction by researchers, and theoret-

ically are found to be necessary for gaining the

required capabilities of agile manufacturing.

A list of appropriate practices, associated to eachcapability will be provided as a guide for manufac-

turers, which complements the tool. This list will beintroduced in details in the next paper when report-

ing the next stages of the research.

6. A tool for applying the model

The following tool is being developed to assist

the companies in implementing the proposed meth-

odology. This will be in the form of a table which

will be scored by some authority in a company, and

the result will be a guidance to action by referring

to the next table and choosing the proper practices

and putting them into the plans and programmes of

the company. Fig. 6 represents the proposed table.

`Xa in the table indicates the capabilities that arefound not directly relevant to the change e!ect

domain and are not necessary to be considered as

vital parts of the required capabilities. Though

these factors may be seen later if the change starts

from a higher level domain of e!ect and then lower

levels found to be necessary for consideration later.

Another table will be provided as a complement-

ary tool which will propose the relevant set of

practices and related tools and techniques that could

be applied in order to gain the speci"ed capability.

A typical form of this table is shown in Fig. 7.

7. Results from industrial survey

A questionnaire survey supported by a prelimi-

nary pilot study (questionnaire and industrial inter-

views) was conducted to investigate the practical

aspects of the research. The survey was aimed to

carry out a general study of agility drivers, the

strategies and capabilities adopted by manufactur-ing companies, the practices deployed in respon-

ding to changing environment, and to establish

a preliminary correlation between them. The sur-

vey covered around 1000 companies in three major

industrial sectors, electrical and electronic manu-

facturing, aerospace manufacturing, and vehicle

parts manufacturing. These sectors were chosen as

they were perceived to be more a!ected by the

changes in their environment, and perhaps were

more interested in the subject of agility than others.Results were expected to reveal di!erences between

manufacturers in their approach towards agility, as

assumed in the research hypotheses. Almost 60

responses out of a total 85 received were valid.These were used in analysis of the survey.

Some "ndings of the performed survey are as

follows:

1. The average awareness of the concept of agility

among respondents was 2.8 out of 5. Minimum



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Fig. 6. Table for determining the necessary capabilities.



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Fig. 7. Guide table for determining the required practices, tools, techniques.

average awareness is from vehicle parts manu-

facturing sector (1.9) and the maximum is fromaerospace sector.

2. Environmental pressures, or agility drivers are

strongly recognised by companies as the source

of disturbance and problem in the battle"eld of

competition. These pressures vary for di!erent

sectors and di!erent companies in each sector,

but `customer requirements changesa is the

most important factor among all three sectors.

3. Companies in di!erent sectors respond di!er-

ently to change by considering strategic capabil-

ities which suit them and correlate to their speci-"c circumstances. Focusing on customer,however, received a high rank of emphasis by

most respondents.

4. Utilisation of methods, tools and techniques is

widely experienced or considered by respon-

dents. Most of proposed practices as appropri-

ate tools for agile manufacturing including

information system methods/tools/techniques

are partially implemented in more than 60% of

companies. In the same time, despite the ex-

pressed impact and importance of these practi-ces, the achievements resulted from them in

responding to change and taking competitive

advantage have not gone far enough. This could

be interpreted as the lack of strategic intent and

weakness of approaches to adoption of practices.

5. Practices regarding organisation and people are

found to be more e!ective and also more impor-

tant for manufacturers.

6. In contrary with the strong emphasis of agile

manufacturing literature on practices such as

virtual organisation, mass-customisation, and

utilising Internet as an information tool, theywere found implemented partially in only

a small percent of responding companies. Also

the importance stated for them were not signi"-

cant.

7. Sixty eight percent of respondents use a system

of `manufacturing to ordera which shows a

major tendency to specialise products according

to changing nature of the business environment.



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7.1. Discussion

Data revealed from the survey has provided

support for the concepts employed by the meth-

odology. These including validity of the basic as-

sumption made about change as the main driver of

agility, di!erent types and di!erent levels of impactof changes as drivers of agility in di!erent sectors

and di!erent type of companies, various strategies

approached by manufacturing companies to

respond to change, various practices that are

deployed by companies and the degree of impact of

each on the ability of the company in responding to

change and achieving success, and support for the

relationships that were assumed in the model. The

data are also being used in providing the following

evidences in developing the model further:

1. Determining the practices that are more widely

used and the degree of their impact on the abilityof companies in responding to di!erent areas of

change.

2. Determining the best strategies and practices in

responding to change, by comparison between

more successful and less successful companies,

based on the measures taken from literature.

3. Establishing a basis for developing a preliminary

network of relationships between agility drivers,

agility capabilities and agility practices. This

would be resulted by a cross analysis of the data

from the survey, which will be validated and

extended in the next step of the research.

8. Conclusion

Agility is a vital ability in the revolutionary turn-

ing of the business environment into a turbulent

place of competition and struggle for success.

Agility is the ability to detect the changes in the

business environment, and respond to them byproviding the appropriate capabilities. Strategic in-

tent to become agile and leveraging the core com-

petencies of the company towards achieving the

competitive advantage are essential. Every com-

pany should understand the circumstances it deals

with, the threats it receives from the business envi-

ronment and the opportunities that would bring

them prosperity and success. These concepts have

been put together in the form of a methodology

that suggests a realistic understanding of the manu-

facturers business environment and some steps that

would lead them to resolve the di$culties and

problems and also the ways to take advantage of

the emerging opportunities.

The study so far suggests that the research needto be pursued by the following stages:

1. An industrial structured interview session to

exploit the unveiled aspects of the methodology

including details of change areas, agility capabil-

ities, and agility practices, and also to provide

further support for the achieved conceptual

results.

2. The results from the interviews should be exam-

ined through a series of case studies to validate it

and gain the required credibility.

3. The results from the interview and case study

sections to be geared together in order to pro-vide an information system tool which could be

used by manufacturing companies in approach-

ing agility.

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Method for Achieving Agility in Manufacturing Industry

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