Working towards agile manufacturing in the UK industry

The business environment is one which is ever more demanding on companies, due to its sheer dynamism, which means that they are constantly having to i mprove their manufacturing performance. Organisations are continuously havi ng to cope with changing markets that are unpredictable and more diversifie d, increasing global competition and ever changing customer demands. Compan ies now have to be able to not only predict variations and changes within t he market and socio-economic and political environments but must also be ab le to adapt and change in accordance with these environments. As a result, this demands that an organisation develops and sustains an inherent ability to continuously change. Such a demand can be met by adopting the managemen t philosophy of agile manufacturing. Tn embracing such an approach, there a re a lot of key concepts and enabling technologies that are required to be able to implement agile manufacturing and many companies do not know how fa r down the path they are towards becoming agile manufacturing organisations . Hence, in providing a deeper understanding, this paper proposes a concept ual model, based on joint research, which has been developed to identify wh ere UK's best practice companies are in their quest to become agile manufac turing organisations. In support of this, a questionnaire has been develope d and completed by best practitioners of manufacturing, to assess the model , and establish whether they are making progress to becoming agile manufact uring organisations. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.