THE AGILE SUPPLY CHAIN IN TURBULENT AND VOLATILE MARKET

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Dr. K. Abdus Samad and A. S. Mubarak, “The Agile Supply Chain In Turbulent and Volatile Market”
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THE AGILE SUPPLY CHAIN IN TURBULENT AND VOLATILE MARKET
Dr. K. Abdus Samad
Director & Research Supervisor,
Jamal Institute of Management,
Jamal Mohamed College (Autonomous), Tiruchirappalli – 20
A. S. Mubarak, Dubai, U.A.E
Research Scholar
Jamal Institute of Management,
Jamal Mohamed College (Autonomous), Tiruchirappalli-20
ABSTRACT
Agility is the fundamental characteristic of a supply chain needed for survival in turbulent
and volatile markets, which are becoming normal, as product life cycles shorten and
environmental forces create additional uncertainty resulting in higher risk in the supply chain
management. Agility further helps in providing the right product, at the right time to the
consumer, which is the main objective of any supply chain.
Being responsive is an increasingly important skill for firms in today's global economy;
thus firms must be agile. Naturally, it follows that an organization's agility depends on its
supply chain being agile. However, achieving supply chain agility is a function of other
abilities within the organization, specifically supply chain flexibility and technology
integration. The integration enables a firm to tap its supply chain flexibility which in turn
results in higher supply chain agility and ultimately higher competitive business performance.
Key words: Agility, Supply chain, Lean, Flexibility, B2B, Collaboration, Globalization,
Manufacturing.
Cite this Article: Dr. K. Abdus Samad and A. S. Mubarak. The Agile Supply Chain in
Turbulent and Volatile Market. International Journal of Management, 7(2), 2016, pp. 01-11.
http://www.iaeme.com/ijm/index.asp
1. INTRODUCTION
Agility is a business-wide capability that embraces organizational structures, information systems,
logistics processes and, in particular, mindsets. A key characteristic of an agile organization is
flexibility. Indeed the origins of agility as a business concept lie inflexible manufacturing systems
(FMS). Initially it was thought that the route to manufacturing flexibility was through automation to
enable rapid change (i.e. reduced set-up times) and thus a greater responsiveness to changes in product
mix or volume. Later this idea of manufacturing flexibility was extended into the wider business
context and the concept of agility as an organizational orientation was born. Agility should not be
confused with ‘leanness’. Lean is about doing more with less. The term is often used in connection
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Volume 7, Issue 2, February (2016), pp. 01-11
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International Journal of Management (IJM), ISSN 0976 – 6502(Print), ISSN 0976 -
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with lean manufacturing to imply a ‘zero inventory’, just-in-time approach. Paradoxically, many
companies that have adopted lean manufacturing as a business practice are anything but agile in their
supply chain. The car industry in many ways illustrates this conundrum. The origins of lean
manufacturing can be traced to the Toyota Production System (TPS), with its focus on the reduction
and elimination of waste.
2. THE IMPACT OF LEAN AND AGILE SUPPLY CHAIN
Market globalization and steep competition are increasing the need for more efficient and effective
strategies in meeting evolving market demands. Adopting a more integrated approach to supply chain
relationship management has been increasingly viewed as a way of meeting changing customer needs.
Lean and agility frameworks used as tools for achieving supply chain integration. Lean and agility are
important tools to achieve supply chain integration, but respondents are yet to fully achieve the
transition to lean/agile enterprise. Generally, respondents are implementing lean/agile principles in
cooperation and collaboration with suppliers and customers, demand pull system, and using
combination of strategies. However, it is clear that adequate market information is required when
trying to fit lean/agile principles into supply chain strategy. Furthermore, all respondent recognize the
need for change to satisfy customer need, but the respond to change vary from one company to another.
Also, there is a gradual shift from traditional focus solely on cost and profit to customer relation
relationship management and customer satisfaction. Consequently, companies are organizing
themselves around the customer who pulls goods and value from the producer of the goods.
3. COMPLEXITY IN SUPPLY CHAIN OPERATIONS
The resilience for capturing the dynamics of turbulence and vulnerability into the concept of a ‘supply
chain,’ adds to its complexity. Better understanding of the concept of a supply chain is critical for the
network of companies involved in the upstream and downstream flows of products, services, finances,
and information from the initial supplier to the ultimate customer. Therefore, to deal from the
beginning with the vast degree of turbulence and complexity in supply chains requires an enterprise
view with collaboration among all business functions within the firm , as well as inter-organizational
alignment among supply chain members, otherwise inbound and outbound logistics. Because, frequent
changes, in the turbulent corporate environment, result in increasing complexity and vulnerability.
Supply chain incorporates three main flows: material, information and cash flow. Material flow
activities aim at delivering to the final customer, via procurement of raw materials, manufacturing,
distribution and customer service. These must be managed from upstream to downstream, based on the
bidirectional flow of information and the movement of money from downstream to upstream.

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Flows in the supply chain Sufficient understanding of SCM is very useful, as well as of how it
emerged and how it has been rapidly progressed to become mainstream at research and application
level. Also, the implications of advance to SCR, acknowledged as a ‘revolutionary change’ must be
realized, since it has been attributed as comparable to the scientific management and planning that
emerged just about one century ago . Seeds of these changes go back to early after the 2nd world war,
by severe criticism of the functional firm structure and side effects of fragmentation of management,
against coordination and effectiveness.
Especially, the distribution functions, such as procurement and replenishment, transport and
warehousing, marketing and selling were treated in the past as ‘cost burden’ and ‘liability’. Therefore,
the emergence of logistics as a scientific discipline deals with their interdependent management, taking
into consideration the trade-offs and the potential positive effects in cost, quality, time, service and
value creation to the final users. The use of such effects has been supported by assignment of ‘non-
core’ functions to third parties (outsourcing: 3PL), upon the ‘make-or-buy question’. Processes are
specified and classified in two categories: core processes which express the main business goal and
non-core ones, which are supplementary and can be assigned to outsourcing. The make-or-buy
decisions have to be based on strategic integrated planning at supply chain level. The next historical
advance was the drive to further strengthening of the role of Logistics with entire move to interfirm
supply chain level with stable interdisciplinary collaboration. SCM is an integrated concept throughout
the supply chain as a source of value maximization and total cost minimization, based on
interrelationships mix in a network sense, was put in action later. Different experts have been
discussing the usefulness of sustainable management systems (SMS) as holistic systems that might
integrate environmental, social and economic elements. Focus has turn to value creation to the
customers through higher service quality. This new change has helped in clearing up alternative
distinctive firm strategies to ensure competitive advantage: ‘cost leadership’, ‘product differentiation’
and ‘combined focus’, with marked contribution of Porter. An arbitrary taxonomy in differentiated
frameworks of the changes includes the following: the focus in ‘cost leadership’ strategies during the
1970’s was followed by ‘product differentiation’ during 1980’s. 1990's has been earmarked by the so-
called ‘globalization phenomenon’, after the unprecedented peaceful collapse of the central planning
system in Europe by late 1980’s. To face the challenge of adjustment to the new ever changing
transactions environment, there has been a further major change for first time in the economic history,
characterized by the unification of firms at supply chain level, the so called business process or supply
chain re-engineering. Further attention during the first decade of the new millennium was given to the
so-called sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and to the issue of agility and later on to
resilience, putting vulnerability and sustainability, in the mainstream of attention. The rebuilding of a
supply chain into a SCM network has been subject to a very complicated exercise that requires long-
run collaboration, holistic strategy, discipline, sandcontrol

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4. EXTENDED SUPPLY CHAIN
Clarification of many other relevant concepts is associated with the historical change, such as
integration, holistic character, networks, value strategy, management systems (MS), power structure,
institutional flexibility, etc. Such issues are increasingly studied without always sufficient specification,
in a variety of fields, including cybernetics and governance, academy, politics, and non-governmental
organizations, also being used by the general population.
5. LEAN MANUFACTURING CONCEPTUAL IDEOLOGY
The term Lean was first used by Krafick in 1988, a principle researcher in the International Motor
Vehicle Program (IMVP) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to describe what today is
known as the Lean Manufacturing or Lean Production paradigm. A major output of the IMVP research
efforts was the publication of the book, The Machine that Changed the World: The story of lean
production. The book chronicled the operations found in the automotive industry, capturing the
dramatic differences in approach and ensuing performance found among the world's leading
automakers. In particular, the book examined how the techniques employed by Japanese automakers,
namely Toyota, outpaced the performance achieved by U.S. and European competitors. Much has been
written in the academic and popular business press about Toyota's much envied competitive weapon,
the Toyota Production System. Every industrialized country has now fully recognized the importance
and benefits of lean ideology. Lean manufacturing is it uses half of everything human effort in the
factory, manufacturing space, investment in tools, engineering hours to develop a new product. It
makes use of its tools to strive for zero inventories, zero downtimes, zero defects, and zero delays in
the production process. The implementation of lean principles in any organization begins by
identification of the value stream; Value is all the aspects of a product that a customer is willing to
spend his/her money on it. i.e., all those activities, required to manufacture a product (goods, services)
to a customer. The numerous activities performed in any organization can be categorized into the
following three types
1. Value adding Activities - which include all of the activities that the customer acknowledges as
valuable.
2. Non Value Adding Activities -These include all the activities that the customer considers as
non-valuable, either in a manufacturing system or in the service system. , Waste can be
described as the opposite side of value on a Lean coin. These are pure wastes and involve
unnecessary actions that should be eliminated completely.
3. Necessary but Non Value Adding Activities - These include the activities that are necessary
under the current operating conditions but are considered as non-valuable by the customer.
Lean manufacturing focuses on elimination of waste (or "muda" in Japan) Taiichi Ohno believed
that fundamental for any company's success was the elimination of waste. Ohno (1988) developed a list
of seven basic forms of muda,
 Overproduction (production ahead of demand).
 Transportation (unnecessary transport of products).
 Waiting (waiting for the next production step).
 Inventory (all components, work-in-progress and finished product not being processed).
 Motion (unnecessary movement of operator equipment).
 Over processing (unnecessary processing).
 Defects in production (the effort involved in inspecting for and fixing defects)
Womack and Jones (1996) added to this list with the muda of goods and services that fail to meet
the needs of customers. Lean protest the need for an organization to develop a culture of continuous
improvement in quality, cost, delivery and design. Production is agile if it efficiently changes operating
states in response to uncertain and changing demands placed upon it. Production is lean if it is
accomplished with minimal waste due to unneeded operations, inefficient operations, or excessive
buffering in operations. So it is concluded that while agility presumes leanness, leanness might not
presume agility. Lean production can be effectively utilized to remove wastes to improve business
performance. Emphasis on the elimination of loss and the waste of resource factors is largely

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associated with lower inventory which is very clearly shown by analyzing the "rock and ship" analysis.
In this analysis, as the stock (water level) is reduced, sources of waste (rocks) appear in the form of
latency, poor quality conformity, prolonged preparations, unreliable processes etc. the removal of these
losses is caused to lower inventory without a negative effect on the flow of materials (ships). Womack,
Jones, and Roos add that in comparison to a mass production approach, a lean company calls for far
less inventory and incurs fewer defects while providing greater variety in products.
6. AGILE MANUFACTURING CONCEPTUAL IDEOLOGY
The term ‘agile manufacturing’ refers specifically to the operational aspects of a manufacturing
company which accordingly, try to translate into the ability to produce customized products at mass
production prices and with short lead times. Agile manufacturing is a new idiom that is used to
represent the ability of a producer of goods and services to survive and flourish in the face of
continuous change. These changes can occur in markets, technologies, business relationships and all
other facets of the business enterprise. Agile manufacturing can be defined as the capability of
surviving and prospering in a competitive environment of continuous and random change by reacting
quickly and effectively to changing markets, driven by customer-designed products and services.
According to Naylor et al. (1999), “agility means applying market knowledge and a vital corporation to
exploit profitable opportunities in a rapidly changing market place”. The relation between agility and
flexibility is extensively discussed. It has been proposed that the origins of agility lie in flexible
manufacturing systems. Agility can be obtained by systematically developing and gaining capabilities
that can make the supply chain reflect rapidly and diversely to environmental and competitive changes.
Consequently, these firms need a number of distinguishing attributes to promptly deal with the changes
inside their environment. Such attributes include four main elements: responsiveness, competency,
flexibility/adaptability and quickness/ speed. The base for agility is the amalgamation of information
technologies, staff, business process organization, innovation and facilities into main competitive
attributes. The main points of the definition of may be summarized as follow:
 High quality and highly customized products.
 Products and services with high information and value-adding content.
 Recruitment of core competencies.
 Responsiveness to social and environmental issues.
 Combination of diverse technologies.
 Response to change and ambiguity demand.
 Intra-enterprise and inter-enterprise integration.

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The implementation of agile strategies has some benefits for firms, including quick and efficient
reaction to changing market demands; the ability to customize products and services delivered to
customers, the capability to manufacture and deliver new products in a cost-efficient model, decreased
producing costs, enhanced customer satisfaction, elimination of non-value-added activities and
increased competitiveness.
The most publications on agility strategies can classified into four categories:
1. 1. Conceptual models and framework for achieving agility, this mainly includes, dimension,
enablers, aspects and theoretical model
2. 2. Paths to agility , which considered the flexibility practices in terms of "volume flexibility
,modification flexibility and delivery flexibility " and responsiveness from three facets,
volume , product, process are vital paths to agility.
3. 3. Measuring and assessing the performance of agility these include the exploration of rules
for assessment, the identification of criteria and the establishment of agility index, which was
proposed as a way of measuring the intensity level of agility attributes was developed.
4. 4. The development of agility in a supply chain context.
Therefore, agility has been advocated as the commerce paradigm of the century and in addition
agility is considered the winning strategy for becoming a general leader in an increasingly competitive
market of quickly changing customers’ requirements. Agile manufacturing aims to meet the changing
market requirements by suitable alliances based on core-competencies, by organizing to manage
change and uncertainty, and by leveraging people and information. Agile manufacturing does not
represent a series of techniques much as it represents an elementary change in management philosophy.
It is not about small-scale improvements, but an completely different way of doing business with a
primary emphasis on flexibility and quick response to the changing markets and customer needs.
7. LEAGILE MANUFACTURING CONCEPTUAL IDEOLOGY
Agility in concept comprises; responding to change (predictable or unexpected) in the appropriate ways
and due time, and exploiting and taking advantage of changes, as opportunities. Harrison and Van
Hoek (2005)argue that “where demand is volatile, and customer requirements for variety is high, the
elimination of waste becomes a lower priority than responding rapidly to the turbulent marketplace”
The lean production philosophy with its current set of tools will not be able to tackle the increasing
demand for customer specific products, favoring , organizations to move towards more agile
production philosophies, considered to be better suitable to handle customer specific requirements with
flexibility and responsiveness. With increasingly customized products, the ‘mass markets’ will be split
into multiple niche markets in which the most significant requirements will tend to move towards
service level. Recognized cost as the market winner for systems operating on the lean manufacturing
philosophies. In all cases named above costs, quality, and lead time are market qualifiers where they
are not market winners. Rapid changes in the business environment and uncertainty have been part of
management studies and research for a long time, so managing uncertainties still remains one of the
most important tasks for organizations. Production is agile if it efficiently changes operating states in
response to uncertain and changing demands placed upon it. Production is lean if it is accomplished
with minimal waste due to unneeded operations, inefficient operations, or excessive buffering in

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operations. So it is concluded that while agility presumes leanness, leanness might not presume agility.
Lean production is a broad concept and encompasses terms such as flexible manufacturing, mass
customization and even agile manufacturing” When lean tools are effectively applied taking into
consideration agility, one can increase flexibility by further introducing safety stocks, or operating with
some free capacity This will ensure that the supply chain is robust to changes in end consumers
requirements. However, Naylor et al warns that leanness and agility are mutually exclusive and cannot
be simultaneously applied at the same point in a supply chain. While leanness operates best when
planning horizons are long and products variants few, agility requires reactivity to customer orders in
short uncertain planning horizons and highly customized product variants. This has resulted to the
coining of a new production philosophy; leagile.
According to Agarwal leagility, is a philosophy best suited for an entire supply chain and not for a
single point in the supply chain. Leagile blends the lean and agile. Christopher and Towill expanded
the discussion in Naylor et al. (1999) and Mason-Jones et al. (2000a, 2000b) supported the concept of
hybrid manufacturing strategies and identified three practical ways of combing the lean and agile
paradigms:
 The first is via the Pareto curve approach; adopting lean for the 20% class high volume
products having 80% of the demand and agile for the 80% having 20 % of the demand.
 The second is the use of a decoupling point or postponement principle. A de coupling point is
a position in the supply chain where one production paradigm takes over from another. Since
the lean philosophy focuses on cost efficiency along the whole value chain its tools can
because to run operations up to the decoupling point, in a cost efficient way. While the agile
production principles are applied on the other side of the decoupling point. But then, there are
still some challenges like determining the position of a decoupling point such that the burden
is rightfully divided across the participants in the supply chain. At the same time it is
important to have the decoupling point closer to the customer so that lean practices can be
applied to a greater portion of the value chain. Since its position depends on end user, lead
time sensitivity, and further, on where the variability is greatest in the supply.
 The third approach is to separating demand into base and surge demand, using lean for base
demand and agile for surge demand .the term Agile or leagile should remind us that we must
be responsive to change and uncertainties. We may need to come up with a number of other
metrics required of our management systems and processes, all of which may exist within the
companies already working at the level of best practice and based on the same basic good
manufacturing practices, but the lean tools still remain the foundation.
These three strategies were complementary rather than mutually exclusive, and yet it was likely
that each would work better than others in certain contexts. In addition to decoupling point
identification, there are other approaches to achieve a leagile supply chain. One such method is
transshipment, naturally led to coordinated replenishment policies across locations. Another approach
was proposed by Stratton and Warburton (2003). They argued that leanness and agility were in practice
caught in a trade-off conflict. However, if it were possible to define explicitly the trade-offs, then a
solution to resolve this contradiction was possible. In this way, they interpreted the conflict nature in
terms of dependency, fluctuation, inventory and capacity, and then systematically linked such trade-
offs to develop another approach. This approach was combined with other approaches: the theory of

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inventive problem solving and the theory of constraints. Inventive problem solving of a number of
principle-based solution systems was applied to solve the physical contradictions between leanness and
agility while theory of constraints was resolving trade-offs for highly complementing to inventive
problem solving . However, although there may exist various ways to combine them, it is significantly
important that lean production is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for achieving agility (Kidd,
1994; Robertson and Jones, 1999; Mason-Jones et al., 2000b; Furthermore, agility cannot be achieved
without experiencing relevant stages of leanness. MasonJones et.al. (2000a) presented two reasons for
this fact. First, lean and agile supply chains share many common features that help speed up the
achievement of leagility. Hence, agility may be initiated by building on the relevant features of
leanness. Second, agility requires control of all processes in the supply chain. It is difficult, if not
impossible, to see how agility can be acquired without having first gone through the process
enhancement stage of lean production.
8. B2B (BUSINESS TO BUSINESS) INTEGRATION WITH SUPPLY CHAIN PARTNERS
The use of information technology to share data between buyers and suppliers is, in Effect,
creating a virtual supply chain. Virtual supply chains are information based rather than inventory
based. Conventional logistics systems are based upon a paradigm that seeks to identify the optimal
quantities of inventory and its spatial location. Complex formulae and algorithms exist to support this
inventory-based business model. Paradoxically, once we have visibility of demand through shared
information, the premise upon which these formulae are based no longer holds. Electronic Data
Interchange (EDI) and now the Internet have enabled partners in the supply chain to act upon the same
data i.e. real demand, rather than be dependent upon the distorted and noisy picture that emerges when
orders are transmitted from one step to another in an extended chain. Shared information between
supply chain partners can only be fully leveraged through process integration. By process integration is
meant collaborative working between buyers and suppliers, joint product development, common
systems and shared information. This form of co-operation in the supply chain is becoming ever more
prevalent as companies focus on managing their core competencies and outsource all other activities. In
this new world a greater reliance on suppliers and alliance partners becomes inevitable and, hence, a
new style of relationship is essential. In the ‘extended enterprise’ as it is often called, there can be no
boundaries and an ethos of trust and commitment must prevail. Along with process integration comes
joint strategy determination, buyer-supplier teams, transparency of information and even open-book
accounting. This idea of the supply chain as a confederation of partners linked together as a network
provides the fourth ingredient of agility. There is a growing recognition that individual businesses no
longer compete as stand-alone entities but rather as supply chains. We are now entering the era of
‘network competition’ where the prizes will go to those organizations who can better structure, co-
ordinate and manage the relationships with their partners in a network committed to better, closer and
more agile relationships with their final customers. It can be argued that in today’s challenging global
markets, the route to sustainable advantage lies in being able to leverage the respective strengths and
competencies of network partners to achieve greater responsiveness to market needs.
Many types of manufacturing database management and inventory control systems exist today.
Each of these systems views the process from the narrow viewpoint of the goals of such a system. For
example, inventory control processes tend to determine when the inventory of an item is projected to be
depleted and when to order goods to prevent such depletion. The inventory control process does not
generally take into account the problems associated with availability of materials and machines to
satisfy the inventory demand. On the other hand the manufacturing control process considers the
availability problem but does not take into account the effect of a sales promotion that will deplete an
inventory faster than projected. A marketing department in preparing a sales promotion will often not

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consider the effect that promotion will have on availability, inventory and profit margin but tends to
focus on sales goals. What is needed is a system that will support managers with each of these
viewpoints in understanding the effect of the various decisions that can be made on the supply chain as
a whole both currently and into the near future.
9. SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT PARTNER COLLABORATION
In meeting a challenging business environment, the emergence and rapid extension of SCM has not to
be conceived as prescription, savior and a safety belt. True that no single firm can anymore ensure
effective provision of product (or product/service bundle) since inefficiency, delays and other ‘wastes’
(i.e. non-value adding activities) can emerge anywhere in a disorganized supply chain. Contemporary
effective integrated supply chain can create maximum end-user value, with agents working together as
partners. The real challenge is how to marry collaboration with competition, by designing and
coordinating in order to create the desired value for the customer throughout the whole supply chain.
Facing this new era of business practices, successful winners will be those that can collaborate and
work together with all partners, in a supply chain committed to better, faster and closer relationships
with the final users. The modern electronic high technology can facilitate collaboration and information
for sharing risks and costs, taking an equitable share in the outcomes to be created. The partners can be
motivated to help each other, to improve collectively the operational efficiency towards eliminating
eliminate waste, so that the whole chain will be optimized and integrated as a single system. The sense
of collaboration in the network supply chain level is to achieve high collective capabilities and
performance, beyond temporary long-term cooperation. Collaboration goes side by side with co-
ordination, involving a set of relations to develop seamlessly linked activities between and among
trading partners, through JIT systems and other mechanisms. Thus, co-ordination is not sufficient for
the overall SCM and therefore it calls for a new sense of collaboration. True collaboration partnerships
are based on high levels of trust, commitment, consistency and information sharing among the partners.
Partners throughout the supply chain must be integrated in a user customership relation so that to attain
maximum satisfaction for the final users. Thus, there can be significant impact on own performance as
well as that on the whole supply chain. Close collaboration with partners, including manufactures,
suppliers, distributors, transporters and end-customers are the key to success. A climate of closer
collaboration among all partners creates common goals for the mutual benefit of each individual
partner. Failing to collaborate would result in the distortion of information, which, in turn, can lead to
inefficiencies, excess stock, slow response and lost profits. Collaboration enables partners to gain a
joint understanding of future product demand and to implement realistic programmes for satisfying it
and yielding major business benefits: increase in the market share, stock reductions, reduction in cost
and lead-time, improved quality and shorter product development cycles.
Collaboration in the supply chain

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The changing business environment has called for close collaboration in the form of extended
enterprise, adaptive supply chain, and linking of firms into learning organizations, with knowledge to
become ‘the currency of exchange’ , through frequent exchange of status information . All activities for
movement of materials and information should be operated through collaboration with partners in a
synchronized and coordinated way.
10. CONCLUSION
The phenomenon of increasing vulnerability, along with the globalization the high relevance of the
resilience issue rests in mitigating risks of unexpected events, ensures company sustainability in
turbulent environmental conditions, due to economic, social, technological and physical climate
changes. Management has to traditionally recognize the importance of logistics and supply chain
management as a key element in gaining advantage in the marketplace. However, in today’s more
challenging business environment, where volatility and unpredictable demand becomes normal, it is
essential that the importance of agility to be recognized in the organization. Thus the organizations will
be best outfitted for endurance in the turbulent and volatile markets.
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