Int. J.

Production Economics 62 (1999) 33}43

Agile manufacturing:
The drivers, concepts and attributes
Y.Y. Yusuf , M. Sarhadi
, A. Gunasekaran*
Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, NG1 4BU, UK

Department of Manufacturing and Engineering Systems, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB8 3PH, UK
Department of Management, University of Massachusetts, North Dartmouth, MA 02747, USA

Abstract
Agile manufacturing, a recently popularised concept, has been advocated as the 21st century manufacturing paradigm.
It is seen as the winning strategy to be adopted by manufacturers bracing themselves for dramatic performance
enhancements to become national and international leaders in an increasingly competitive market of fast changing
customer requirements. This paper identi"es the drivers of agility and discusses the portfolio of competitive advantages
that have emerged over time as a result of the changing requirements of manufacturing. The need to achieve the
competitive advantages of manufacturing in synergy and without trade-o!s is fundamental to the agile paradigm. To
further the understanding of agility, this paper reviews the meaning of agility from di!erent perspectives and suggests
a comprehensive de"nition which can be adopted as a working de"nition by practitioners. Four underlining concepts of
agility has emerged from the working de"nition and the paper presents a representation of these concepts and their
interactions. Finally, the paper highlights some of the key enablers of agility and identi"es potential future research
directions.  1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Agility; Drivers; Concepts; Attributes; Enablers

1. Introduction advances in communication technology and pre-

vious paradigms of manufacturing, yet it is more
There is an increasing recognition that agile than a hybrid construct of technology and any pre-
manufacturing is a necessary condition for com- vious method of production. It advocates a holistic,
petitiveness. The original concept was popularised rather than a sub-optimal, approach to manufactur-
in 1991 by a group of scholars at Iaccoca Institute ing. The concept is at the moment a vision and
of Lehigh University in USA, and it is gaining currently being re"ned to further its understanding.
currency among practitioners and academics alike, There is yet no company that is truly agile in the
as the next battle ground for global competition in sense of having acquired all the essential character-
the face of shrinking conventional markets and istics identi"ed in the growing body of literature on
fading national barriers. The concept owes a lot to agile manufacturing. There are important issues
and questions that need to be addressed to under-
* Corresponding author: Tel.: #1 508 999-9187; fax: #1 508 stand how agile manufacturing might be achieved
999-8776; e-mail: [email protected] with clarity of purpose, focus and goals.

0925-5273/99/$ - see front matter  1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 2 5 - 5 2 7 3 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 2 1 9 - 9
34 Y.Y. Yusuf et al./Int. J. Production Economics 62 (1999) 33}43

This paper presents the genesis of the agile did not take account of the di!erences between
manufacturing concept, and examines the manufac- organisations, for example, incorporate culture or
turing imperatives and potential competitive ad- philosophy.
vantages that are the driving forces behind agility.
The paper also reviews de"nitions of agile manu-
facturing and proposes a comprehensive de"nition 3. The drivers of agility
embracing the competitive foundations of agility
and the key concepts of agile manufacturing. In so The main driving force behind agility is change.
doing, the paper attempts to address some of the Manufacturing has tended toward gradual change
basic requirements for achieving agility. Finally, and adjustment in response to the prevailing mar-
the paper presents some of the problems to contend ket circumstances. In this section the changing
with if agility is to be of long-term bene"ts for manufacturing requirements that have culminated
prospective agile companies. in a broad spectrum of competitive criteria will be
brie#y reviewed. Intimate understanding of the re-
quirements of modern manufacturing is important
2. The 21st century manufacturing paradigm in order to set a proper agenda for strategy imple-
mentation. The issues discussed below relate to
Agility, as a concept in manufacturing, was automation and price/cost consideration, widening
coined by a group of researchers at Iaccoca Insti- customer choice and expectation, competitive pri-
tute, Lehigh University, in 1991 [1] to describe the orities, integration and proactivity and achieving
practices observed and considered as important manufacturing requirements in synergy.
aspects of manufacturing during their investigation.
The group involved many of the senior executives
of US companies and the study culminated into 3.1. Automation and price/cost consideration
a two volume report conveying an industry-led
vision for a possible profound shift in manufactur- As implied above, the pressure on manufacturing
ing paradigm. has always been dictated by the market. The post
The report was, mainly, on how USA could re- World War II period was characterised by relative-
gain its pre-eminence in manufacturing. It de- ly high demand and an inability to supply. The
scribed initiatives in USA, Western Europe and increase in demand after the war created extended
Japan aimed at creating an industrial climate that backlogs of customer orders which served as "rm
will ensure competitiveness in the emerging global orders on which material planning could be based
manufacturing order. The agile manufacturing [3]. Quality and speed were not of considerable
paradigm was recommended as holding the poten- signi"cance as consumers were scrambling for the
tial, if adopted, for the USA to resume a leading available products on o!er. Price was the dominant
role in manufacturing. Included in the report is factor that determined customers preferences [4].
a view of agile manufacturing enterprise, compo- This encouraged massive automation of produc-
nents, infrastructure and operating mechanisms. It tion processes with resultant mass production of
also identi"ed competitive foundation, character- goods. The single most important objective of
istics, elements and enabling subsystems of agility. manufacturing was mass production of goods at
The report was a pioneering work and was well lower prices. The automation was rigid and #exibil-
received by academics, practitioners and govern- ity was constrained.
ment o$cials.
However, Burgess [2] argues that agility was yet
ill-de"ned and more work needed to be done to 3.2. Widening customer choice and expectation
re"ne the concept. For example, the concept of
agility as expounded in the report lacked solid The changing market and shift in customer pref-
grounding in management theory. The work also erences in favour of quality gave birth to the 1980s'
 Y.Y. Yusuf et al./Int. J. Production Economics 62 (1999) 33}43 35

quality crusade. This led to aggressive and unprece- any company. The importance of speed cannot be
dented focus on quality while maintaining competi- overstated. The #exibility of production machinery
tive price. Increasing customer expectation in the as well as employees and the organisation are re-
form of strong taste for quality helped intensify the quired for a corporate-wide #exible strategy. Mair
attention devoted to product quality initiatives. [8] espouses the concept of `#exifactorya and ar-
Pursuit of quality by manufacturers was also comp- gues that it is a vehicle for transcending micro-
lemented by the army of researchers and consul- #exibility and realising an overall #exible corporate
tants who popularised quality related concepts strategy. Though quality is now an order quali"er
such as total quality management (TQM), statist- rather than an order winner, it remains important.
ical process control (SPC), and quality function To remain competitive, manufacturers are required
deployment (QFD). to produce products at lower cost, high quality and
with decreasing lead time. In addition, they must
remain proactive and innovative.
3.3. Competing priorities A successful company must therefore acquire the
capability to achieve and explore the competitive
Several criteria for competitiveness have advantage in synergy. Integration both of a tech-
emerged within the "rst half of the 1990s. These nical and social nature, of technology, machinery,
competitive priorities include responsiveness, new functions, strategies, people and management, lies
product introduction, delivery, #exibility, quality, at the foundation of these competitive capabilities.
concern for the environment and international The competitive advantage will have to be achieved
competitiveness. The market place has turned into using the best resources available to an organisa-
`battle"eldsa. An archetypal scramble for market tion or a group of organisations.
was demonstrated by sti! competition between A common theme that runs through the scenario
Yamaha and Honda for Japanese market share in depicted above is change. Successful organisations
the 1980s. [5]. must be able to foresee, adapt and respond to
change using tactical initiatives to achieve strategic
objectives. It is important to engage in creatively
3.4. Integration and proactivity initiating change and to become pro"cient in it.
Survivors of the current competitive storm are
The long established paradigm of manufacturing those organisations that use their pro"ciency in
management is largely reactive. In a highly com- change as a lever to outperform their competitors
petitive market manufacturers must be able to act [9].
proactively. A proactive manufacturer will inte-
grate with customers and help identify their prob-
lems and requirements and also acquire capabilities 4. What is agile manufacturing?
just ahead of need [6,7]. In this way, proactivity
o!ers strategic advantage for competing in the tur- Since the publication of the Iacocca report,
bulence of the global market. The strategic capabil- many publications on agility have appeared, in
ities a!orded by proactivity is strongly dependent book forms [10,11], trade magazines [12}15]
upon the integration and co-ordination in the en- and academic journals [2,5,16,17]. As a mark
terprise that the strategic manufacturing systems of the newness of the concept, every publication
must be e$ciently integrated and coordinated [7]. attempts to de"ne and explain agility. Agile manu-
facturing has been de"ned with respect to the agile
enterprise, products, workforce, capabilities and
3.5. Achieving manufacturing requirements in synergy the environment that gives impetus to the develop-
ment of agile paradigm. The main points of the
From the foregoing discussion it is apparent that de"nition of various authors may be summarised as
one competitive thrust cannot win the battle for follow:
36 Y.Y. Yusuf et al./Int. J. Production Economics 62 (1999) 33}43

E High quality and highly customised products organisation can quickly satisfy customer orders;
[9,11,18,19]. can introduce new products frequently in a timely
E Products and services with high information and manner; and can even get in and out of its strategic
value-adding content [9,10]. alliances speedilya. However, a further insights into
E Mobilisation of core competencies [9,11]. agility could be gained by looking at the speci"c
E Responsiveness to social and environmental and operational issues.
issues [9}11].
E Synthesis of diverse technologies [2,11].
E Response to change and uncertainty [9,10,12]. 4.3. Agility in terms of operationalisation
E Intra-enterprise and inter-enterprise integration
[20,11,21,22]. According to Kidd [11], to operationalise agility,
it can be de"ned as `the synthesis of a number of
enterprises that each have some core skills or com-
4.1. The scope of agility petencies which they bring to a joint venturing
operation2a thus enabling the cooperative enter-
Youssef [23] argues that agility should not be prises to adapt and respond quickly to changing
equated just with the speed of doing things, for it customer requirements. A fairly speci"c and suc-
goes beyond speed and it requires massive struc- cinct de"nition of agility has been proposed by
tural and infrastructural changes. Equating agile Kumar and Motwani [16]: `2ability to accelerate
manufacturing with speed of response or #exibility the activities on critical path and2time-based
is a narrow understanding of what constitutes agil- competitivenessa. In other words agile organisa-
ity. Although agility incorporates speed and #exib- tions are able to compete on the basis of time-
ility, according to Kidd [11], it is much more than compression.
that. Agility is a synthesised use of the developed
and well-known technologies and methods of
manufacturing. That is, it is mutually compatible 4.4. Comprehensive dexnition of agility
with Lean Manufacturing, CIM, TQM, MRPII,
BPR, Employee Empowerment, and OPT. This The proponents of agility at Iaccoca Institute of
view is corroborated by Goldman and Nagel [9]. Lehigh University (USA) have de"ned it as [23]:
They contended that agile manufacturing `assimi- `2A manufacturing system with extraordinary
lates the full range of #exible production technolo- capabilities (Internal capabilities: hard and soft
gies, along with the lessons learned from total technologies, human resources, educated manage-
quality management, &just-in-time' production and ment, information) to meet the rapidly changing
&lean' productiona. needs of the marketplace (speed, #exibility, cus-
tomers, competitors, suppliers, infrastructure, re-
sponsiveness). A system that shifts quickly (speed,
4.2. Agility dexned in terms of outcomes and responsiveness) among product models or be-
tween product lines (#exibility), ideally in real-time
Agility has been de"ned, in terms of outcomes, as response to customer demand (customer needs and
`dynamic, context speci"c, aggressively change em- wants)a. This de"nition embraces the concepts re-
bracing and growth oriented2succeeding2win- #ected in the model of agile manufacturing pro-
ning pro"ts, market share and customersa [10]. In posed by Youssef [21]. The model de"ned
other words, agility is the ability of a business to a framework for agility through representation of
grow in a competitive market of continuous and the interactions between the manufacturer, cus-
unanticipated change, to respond quickly to rap- tomers, suppliers and the basis for competition in
idly changing markets driven by customer-based the agile paradigm.
valuing of products and services [5,24]. By focusing Obviously, di!erent facets of agility have been
on the output, Gehani [25] asserted that `an agile emphasised by various authors and this has lead to
 Y.Y. Yusuf et al./Int. J. Production Economics 62 (1999) 33}43 37

varied views re#ected in the literature. These de"ni-

tions should be considered simultaneously in order
to gain a better understanding of what constitute
agility. Taking all the de"nitions together, it ap-
pears agile manufacturing is indeed a complex
package, the content of which has not yet pen-
etrated the collective consciousness of researchers
Fig. 1. Hierarchy of agility.
and practitioners alike.
In the light of the growing number of literature
on agility, and the breadth of interest in it, a more agile organisation focuses on individual re-
comprehensive de"nition is being suggested in this sources (people, machinery and management),
paper. and the functions that make up the enterprise to
`Agility is the successful exploration of competi- achieve the best possible output. It is the har-
tive bases (speed, #exibility, innovation proactivity, monisation of these aspects of the organisation
quality and pro"tability) through the integration of that leads to agility rather than their respective
recon"gurable resources and best practices in optimisation. Further to achieve the higher level
a knowledge-rich environment to provide cus- of agility the core competencies of prospective
tomer-driven products and services in a fast chang- partners must be brought into joint venturing to
ing market environmenta. maximise the gains of cooperation.
This de"nition shares some properties with E Finally, the de"nition takes cognisance of the
the earlier de"nitions but it is di!erent in four four main concepts of agility. It is increasingly
respects: being recognised that there are four key concepts
for agile competition. These concepts include
E Firstly, it is comprehensive in that it de"nes competition based on core competence manage-
agility in terms of input, operationalisation and ment, virtual enterprise formation, capability for
output. It therefore embodies, and properly ex- re-con"guration and knowledge-driven enter-
presses, the concept of agility as a system. This is prise. The interactions of these four concepts are
a systematic approach that will enable practi- illustrated in Fig. 2. These concepts are discussed
tioners to distinguish between the required input, in detail in the following section.
the operating mechanism and tools, and the de-
sired output.
E Secondly, the competitive foundations of agile 5. The core concepts of agile manufacturing
manufacturing are made explicitly clear. The
bases for competition include: speed, #exibility, The model presented in Fig. 2 includes the fol-
innovation, proactivity, quality and pro"tability. lowing core concepts of agile manufacturing.
This portfolio of competitive thrusts have been
recognised as the sine qua non of manufacturing
which must be achieved in synergy [22,26]. 5.1. Core competence management
E Thirdly, there are three levels of agility implicit in
the de"nition. That is, agility for the individual Core competence may be associated with the
(and other resources), enterprise and inter-enter- corporation's workforce and product and identi-
prise. Goldman et al. [10] have already high- "ed at two di!erent but related levels, the indi-
lighted agility for individuals and enterprise. vidual and the "rm. The core competencies of indi-
A third level of agility for inter-enterprise is being vidual include their skills, knowledge, attitude and
suggested in this paper. Fig. 1 presents the hier- expertise [11]. Through investment in training and
archy of agility and the corresponding character- education the core competencies of individuals
isation, viz. elemental agility, micro-agility and within the enterprise can be upgraded and re-fo-
macro-agility. The "gure suggests that a truly cused to take advantage of current and potential
38 Y.Y. Yusuf et al./Int. J. Production Economics 62 (1999) 33}43

vidual organisations to achieve. Requirements for

complex new products can easily be met through
an interactive network, `allowing physically disper-
sed and organisationally segregated personnel from
the same company to work collaboratively with
one another and with personnel from other com-
paniesa [9]. This is often referred to as virtual
corporation. In a virtual corporation, competence
carriers are transparently available to all business
units. Talented personnel can easily be redeployed
as the windows of opportunities open and close.
Agile organisations, therefore, are apt to increase
Fig. 2. The core concepts of agility. the stock and velocity of circulation of their talents
[27].

trends in customer requirements. Kidd [11] and 5.2. Virtual enterprise

Goldman et al. [10] have described people as the
critical resource of an organisation. Prahalad and The virtual enterprise is di!erent from the tradi-
Hamel [27] stated that people are the competence tional corporate alliance. Fig. 3 presents three
carriers.
The work of Prahalad and Hamel [27] on core
competence is uniquely outstanding. According
to them core competence derives from corporate-
wide learning process, integration of diverse skills
and streams of technologies, work organisation,
creation and delivery of value and capability for
inter-organisational cooperation. For core compet-
ence to be of strategic importance and bring long-
term bene"ts to the corporation it must meet
three conditions. Core competence should provide
capability for multi-venturing and access to a
wide spectrum of markets. It should also strongly
enrich customer valuing of end products and
be di$cult for competitors to copy. Creating
and building core competencies is, however, not an
easy task. Management, who have the sole respons-
ibility for core skills and knowledge acquisition,
must begin by listing the company's main capabili-
ties and identifying the missing links. The missing
links can be `insourceda or acquired through al-
liance. Cooperation is very important here even
with competitors. This implies that in agile para-
digm competition and cooperation are mutually
compatible.
Cooperation among enterprises provides the
platform for rapid response to the level of demand
which would, otherwise, be impossible for indi- Fig. 3. Partnership development model.
 Y.Y. Yusuf et al./Int. J. Production Economics 62 (1999) 33}43 39

levels of cooperation among enterprises culmina- yet su$ciently developed in the UK. For example,
ting in virtual partnership. The "rst stage repres- a simple question such as `How do we go about
ents enterprises that have operated as isolated becoming agile?a cannot be answered with clarity
islands. Interactions between companies at the as there is no available guide and re"ned methodo-
corporate level with little or no liaison at the opera- logy.
tional levels are depicted in stage two. For example
companies may enter into purchasing agreement
and exploit EDI to facilitate cooperation but man- 5.3. Capability for re-con,guration
agement make the decision without involving func-
tional sta!. In stage three agile organisations form Agile enterprises can easily make a signi"cant
virtual enterprises and cooperate both at the corpo- shift in focus, diversify, con"gure and re-align
rate and operational levels. Agile teams work their business to serve a particular purpose rapidly
across the company partners. This is the climax of as the windows of opportunities open. In addition,
cooperative venturing. It allows resources and di- they are capable of pre-empting competition. The
verse skills which are spread across disparate or- key to that, Prahalad and Hamel [27] argue, is to
ganisations to be harnessed and coordinated for develop a strategic architecture featuring a corpo-
manufacturing products, simple or complex, very rate wide map of core skills. This type of organisa-
quickly in accordance with customer speci"cations. tion is well positioned to take advantage of speed,
Customers can become part of the web of "rms by getting to the market before competitors with
a context within which QFD becomes more mean- new products, and proactivity, by providing the
ingful as a facilitator for translating customer re- products that will be required by customers just
quirements into end products. Although the before the need arises. Operational recon"guration
technology for achieving the third stage scenario is necessary to capitalise on the strategic architec-
may be available, the key business processes are ture. Management must invest in technologies that
poorly understood and ill-de"ned. Accordingly, confer operational #exibility at the plant level.
Goldman and Nagel [4] suggested that `techniques However, Goldman and Nagel [9] have cautioned
need to be developed for managing companies that against placing excessive premium on technology
promote workforce initiative at the operational `however dazzling their performancea and con-
level, as well as performance measures for self- cluded that `the notion that new technologies con-
directed, inter-enterprise, project teamsa. fer competitive advantage through some intrinsic
There are two possible approaches for opera- properties that they possess is a fundamental mis-
tionalising the virtual enterprise. A big corporation conceptiona.
can re-organise its business units, and re-focus on
core competencies, to operate as a virtual enter-
prise. Such a corporation will have no need for 5.4. Knowledge-driven enterprise
giving away its expertise. The lack of focus on core
competence, for example, was a key factor in Kidd [11] has broadly de"ned knowledge, with
Chrysler giving away their engine design responsi- respect to manufacturing, to include experiences of
bility in the late 1980s [27]. The other possible people in the organisation, company reports, case
approach is for small companies to come together histories, databases and other repositories. Organ-
and deliver the quality, scope and scale of products isations which intend to become agile should in-
and services which they would not have been able clude the development of a well trained and
to provide individually. There is a great potential, motivated workforce, with the right set of skills,
therefore, for exploitation of the agile principles expertise and knowledge, as an essential element of
and practices by SMEs through rapid partnership their strategies. Such organisations are driven by
formation. However, the right mindset among em- knowledge and information possessed by and avail-
ployees, the necessary business practices required, able to the work force. This epitomises the notion
processes, as well as the methods and tools, are not that `knowledge is powera.
40 Y.Y. Yusuf et al./Int. J. Production Economics 62 (1999) 33}43

The concept of knowledge-driven enterprises de- Gehani [5] suggested six actions required for the
rives from increasing recognition of knowledge and implementation of an agility-based strategy: Cross-
information as the main di!erentiators of successful functional team sharing, empowerment for front-
business. The success of any organisation ultimate- line decision making, modular integration of avail-
ly depends upon its ability to convert the collective able technologies, delayed design speci"cation,
knowledge and skills of its most critical resource product succession planning and enterprise-wide
} people } into solution products. The use and integration of learning. According to Gehani [5],
manipulation of information, as a key competitive by `early involvement of marketers in product con-
instrument has also revolutionised the way that we cept de"nition, and involvement of manufacturers
think about manufacturing and how we operate it. in engineering of the processes for producing the
The ability to control the new product introduction product, many potential downstream problems are
process from the conceptualisation and design pre-empted and prevented at an early stagea.
stages through manufacturing to shipment and Kumar and Motwani [16], who are of a similar
product support requires the exploitation of opinion regarding concurrent engineering, stated
a knowledge-rich work force and sophisticated in- that `savings in development time accrue from the
formation technology in most industrial sectors. fact that the backtracking needed to solve problems
Agility introduces a new dimension to customer when these activities are performed in chronologi-
support to include the provision of access to en- cal sequence is reduced or completely removeda.
hanced functionality originally embedded in the Such cross-functional teams will need to be sup-
product. In essence the customer is getting an ported by a concurrent information structure and
upgraded product at a lower cost than would infrastructure. The concurrent paradigm, as op-
otherwise have been the case. The manufacturer posed to the sequential paradigm, has been exam-
also saves the time for production of an entirely ined by Pant et al. [28]. Their model of this parallel
new product to account for the new customer re- paradigm was validated through case studies and
quirements. In a way, this is also environmentally they demonstrated that signi"cant gains in speed
friendly as it eliminates the need for a new product can be achieved through parallel information pro-
with enhanced performance. cessing and concurrent execution of functions.
Employee empowerment is a well re-hearsed
concept in manufacturing strategies and is a critical
6. Achieving attributes of agility part of TQM. Empowerment enables employees
to take decisions and provide remedial actions
Burgess [2] pro!ered IT-enabled processes for quickly. Such speedy responses will have a signi"-
achieving agility and identi"ed "ve stages depend- cant impact on the rate of order ful"lment. Sim-
ing on the nature of the manufacturing outcomes. ilarly, modularity will enable the organisation to
These stages include localised exploitation, internal meet the customer's speci"cations by modifying
integration, business process redesign, business net- quickly parts of the product. Delayed design speci-
work redesign and business scope rede"nition. In "cation gives more room for late-minute changes.
the opinion of Burgess, these stages result in islands The product planning and de"nition stages can
of automation, computer-integrated manufacture, take a long time and "nal production need only be
agile manufacturing enterprise, virtual agile enter- started after the customer is satis"ed with the speci-
prise and rede"ned virtual agile enterprise, respec- "cation.
tively. Organisation must evolve through any of the An agile organisation must develop a strategic
processes identi"ed to achieve the desired outcome plan to launch new products in succession. Launch-
of manufacturing. Although Burgess did not pro- ing a single product hastily without a follow-up
vide explicit comment on the vision of the rede"ned could be counter-productive. Youssef [21] cau-
virtual enterprise with its rede"ned business scope, tioned against speed-to-market in spite of its vir-
su$ce it to state that such an enterprise will be tues and wrote that `using speed as a strategy must
in"nitely #exible in its tactical and strategic concerns. be planned carefully, for otherwise speed can be
 Y.Y. Yusuf et al./Int. J. Production Economics 62 (1999) 33}43 41

fatala. Enterprise-wide integration of functions can Table 1

lead to the signi"cant achievement of a broad spec- The attributes of an agile organisation
trum of competitive advantages. For example,
Decision domain Related attributes
Yusuf [22] when investigating enterprise-wide in-
tegration of functions and technologies that were Integration Concurrent execution of activities
traditionally isolated, such as computer-aided de- Enterprise integration
sign (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing Information accessible to employees
(CAM), manufacturing resource planning (MRPII) Competence Multi-venturing capabilities
Developed business practice di$cult to
and distribution resource planning (DRP), found copy
that integrated organisations are better than their Team building Empowered individuals working in
less integrated counterparts. This superiority was teams
true for a range of competitive advantages includ- Cross functional teams
ing responsiveness, customer service, new product Teams across company borders
Decentralised decision making
introduction and quality improvement. An inte- Technology Technology awareness
grated learning process occurs when managers fo- Leadership in the use of current techno-
cus on their companies' `longitudinal historiesa to logy
avoid previous mistakes. Skill and knowledge enhancing techno-
Collectively these literature provide insights to logies
Flexible production technology
what constitutes agile practices and attributes of an Quality Quality over product life
agile organisation. The suggested attributes of agil- Products with substantial value-addition
ity are summarised in Table 1. The table presents First-time right design
32 attributes, in 10 decision domains, of an agile Short development cycle times
manufacturing enterprise. The pathways and ob- Change Continuous improvement
Culture of change
stacles to achieving these attributes are important Partnership Rapid partnership formation
issues for consideration if progress is to be achieved Strategic relationship with customers
in moving towards agility. Also important is the Close relationship with suppliers
metrics for the processes that are required for Trust-based relationship with custo-
achieving agility. These requirements are represent- mers/suppliers
Market New product introduction
ed in a conceptual framework in Fig. 4. The frame- Customer-driven innovations
work integrates a set of practices (attributes), Customer satisfaction
metrics and pathways or obstacles to achieving Response to changing market require-
agility. ments
Education Learning organisation
Multi-skilled and #exible people
Workforce skill upgrade
7. Further work Continuous training and development
Welfare Employee satisfaction
More work needs to be done on the core con-
cepts of agility discussed in this paper. For example,
the key business processes for organising and opti- terms of the whole rather than the part. For
mising operational level inter-enterprise coopera- example, an aircraft wing designer must perceive
tion is not well understood. Employees that have herself as an aircraft manufacturer and place her
hitherto worked within, and maintained allegiance work in the context of aircraft manufacture and
to, their sections in a typical departmentalised sales. Another important issue relates to nurturing
organisation, will be required to work in a trans- core competence and its deployment. For example,
parent virtual organisation without functional bar- when organisations transfer their core competen-
riers. This will require a tremendous change in cies to form virtual enterprises what happens to
attitude and approach to work. Each employee will their competencies that are not core or what hap-
be required to view and understand her work in pens to the gap created by `virtuala absence of the
42 Y.Y. Yusuf et al./Int. J. Production Economics 62 (1999) 33}43

those of the existing manufacturing paradigms,

since agility does not negate any of the earlier
paradigms. What is required is a methodology for
synthesising the existing models to aid their ap-
plication.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the

Fig. 4. A framework for achieving agility.
"nancial support for this project by EPSRC and
participating companies.

core competence? These, and may other, questions

need to be properly addressed if agile manufactur-
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