Measuring agile capabilities in the supply chain

Agility is increasingly mentioned as one of the coming challenges to the in ternational business world, given volatile markets and increasingly dynamic performance requirements. Existing literature, however, mainly presents ag ility as a general management or a strongly manufacturing biased concept, b ut does not explicitly relate the concept to the supply chain as a whole. R esearch also shows a bias towards the USA. This paper presents an attempt t o establish an audit of agility in the supply chain. The audit is used in a n empirical investigation of agile capabilities in Europe. Using existing s treams of supply chain research as building blocks, a preliminary framework is introduced for creating an agile supply chain. Based on a survey of agi le efforts in the UK and the Benelux the agile capabilities of companies ar e assessed and approaches to outscore the benchmark are suggested.