agility

Companies have to be thoroughly agile. Agility means that companies must be able to consider two things at the same time: On the one hand, companies have to maintain the quality of their own products and services at all times. Continuous innovations could help with this. On the other hand, companies have to be able to adapt themselves to these permanent changes due to these innovations, whereby the adaptation speed must be as high as possible. The question arises as to what extent the cultural identity of nations play a role in terms of their mutability, flexibility and vitality.

The volatile world urges companies to react more agile to fast changes. Monitoring is a major building block for corporate agility. A lack of understanding of causal interrelations between a multitude of volatility drivers demands a new monitoring approach. Big data is presented as an adequate tool and its agility support is discussed from a data and analytics point of view. Conclusively, guidelines for developing a monitoring system are discussed.

Increasing market volatility and uncertainty require manufacturing companies to adapt their operations model to a substantially changing environment. The orientation towards agility can be seen as a key to success in such a situation. To achieve agility for an organization it is necessary to address four distinct dimensions of agility. A company oriented towards lean production tries to optimize one variable at a time. However, to become agile it is required to address two variables simultaneously. This article outlines current challenges for industrial organizations and points out possible solutions.

Reacting quickly to rapidly changing market needs is, unsurprisingly, a basic requirement for profitable manufacturing. Why turn what is common sense into a science? Agility is the new buzzword. But is it merely „old wine in new bottles“ like so many things in the field of logistics or is it an interesting or even the decisive approach towards ensuring profitable production? Agility in its final perception is an organizations’ ability to swiftly and specifically utilize all available forces in order to fulfill an order. That is to meet requirements with agility. Agility and the excessive focus on detail and planning are oxymorons which are frequently found in both individuals and scientific literature. Agility is the manifestation of good leadership and is pretty much the opposite of planning optimization, high detailing and comprehensive forecasts which is why it is so difficult to describe it within the classic mainstream of logistics research. What really makes production ...

For the design of an agile production system in addition to the holistic view of production and its internal and external links, a detailed analysis of individual components is necessary. These elements are general manufacturing equipment in various types of expression. To investigate and valuate the properties of these components primarily key figures and indicators are used. In the field of facility and maintenance management the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) parameter is widely used to determine the equipment efficiency. This indicator is an integral part of a holistic maintenance management. Recent developments use the OEE value as a basis to evaluate the whole value chain to get a holistic view of the included equipment. This integrated approach is an essential component for assessing the flexibility of production systems, which presents itself in three different dimensions.

The purpose of this paper is to show how corporate strategy can be aligned with the production system of an enterprise to derive an operations strategy. Consequently, the operations strategy is employed to define prospective needs of agility. The research methodology builds upon action research that is realized in a long-term approach with two joint manufacturing companies. Both can be classified as small and medium sized enterprises (SME). The preliminary findings underline the importance of a holistic view towards agility emphasizing organization and people as major drivers of agility. These drivers are addressed by means of a playful intervention with LEGO-bricks.

The migration of production sites out of Europe is primarily based on manufacturing costs. Therefore, perfectly functioning communication systems and reliable logistic services are needed. Although the advantage of lower labor costs will decrease in the future, more low-wage countries will be discovered. The answer cannot be found in low-cost production but in an approach which optimizes processes in a holistic way avoiding waste through intelligent solutions.

Suppliers in turbulent markets find themselves confronted with additional logistical challenges. Customer orders and market demand may be satisfied through the development of a high reaction potential within the company. In order to adjust the production accord-ingly and to demonstrate the logistical abilities to the customers, logistical agility has to be measured and assessed first. A possible approach is the mathematical description of the synchronisation of production and distribution based on throughput diagrams.