5.How To Become Agile

Agility is all about satisfy the customers latest needs. Thus the first step to become agile is to research the customers expectations; mainly the time they are willing to wait for their product to be delivered to them. This will continuously change the company’s position which makes it more competitive in its sector.[10,15]

Keeping in mind that agile manufactures work within specified deadlines, communication responsivness is a key aspect when coming to agile manufacturing. While the customers are stating their requests, the management of the company can immediately distribute the work amongst its suppliers, designers and labourers. This is commonly refered to as strategic agility. Also feedback from each department is essential so that a data base of information could be created pointing out problems which need to be tackled preventing them from getting themselves into bigger problems.[10,15] being capable to solve such problems requries the company to have flexible human resources and organisations which are ready to adapt to any changes needed.All the above is briefly illustrated in figure 3 below

Figure 3: Components of Organisational Agility [8]

Being agile is becoming the aim of several manufacturing organisations. In the industrial world this term is becoming more frequently used. At the same time however, to date, there is no definite body of knowledge which actually relates to agile. Being agile imposes being lean, but there are other options, and agility is not always preferred. Quoting Anand Sharma,

“A lean operation that matches production to current orders maintains agility”[4]

Simply stated, an agile manufacturer is one which has to be able to simultaneously achieve approximately the fastest marketing time possible, keeping costs as low as can be whilst accomplishing access to the consumer market beyond the partners’ individual leeway.[4]

The company itself needs to invest in newer machinery to make the production line as rapid as possible. Blockages in the production line due to the setup time of the machines and change overs will be reduced drastically.[10,15]