The concept of agility

1 The concept of agility the dimensions of the agile supply chain, and the environments that favour agility. We consider when and where agile capabilities should be applied to supply chains. 

2 Agile drivers and practices addressing the drivers of agile supply chains, and the use of agile practices to support them. 

Key Issue what are the dimensions of the agile supply chain  

Second, the supply chain should be viewed as a network of partners who have a common goal to collaborate together in order to respond to end-customer needs. In Chapter 1, we introduced the term network to refer to the cross-linking of partners that forms the basic model used in this book. Individual partners are viewed in terms of their contribution to the value being generated for the 

The third component of agility is viewing the network as a system of business processes. Nesting the capabilities of these processes creates power and synergy for the network. Stand alone processes that do not support material flow create penalties in terms of time, cost and quality for the whole network. As we said on page 12, all processes within the network need to be understood in terms of how they interact with other processes.  

---

It will be apparent that agility is not a single company concept but rather it extends from one end of the supply chain to the other. The concept of agility has significant implications for how organisations within the supply/demand network relate to each other and how they can best work together on the basis of shared information. 

The second problem concerns an understanding of the sharing of transport duties (e.g., the carrying of current) in pure liquid electrolytes. In aqueous solutions, it was possible to comprehend the relative movements of ions in the sense that one ionic species could drift under an electric field with greater agility and therefore transport more electricity than the other until a concentration gradient was set up and the resulting diffusion flux equalized the movements when the electrodes were reached. In fused salts, this comprehension of the transport situation is less easy to acquire. At first, it is even difficult to see how one can retain the concept of transport numbers at all when there is no reference medium (such as the water in aqueous solutions) in which ions can drift. 

Ismail and Sharifi (2006) present a structured framework to provide a practical approach for implementing agile supply chains (ASC), based on the concepts of supply chain design and design for supply chain. 

The challenge to logistics management is to create appropriate supply chain solutions to meet the needs of these ditferent value segments. More than likely there will be the need for multiple supply chain solutions since one size will not fit all . This issue will be dealt with in detail in Chapter 5 where the concept of supply chain agility is discussed. 

The iterative structure of agile development fits well with the iteration needed for usability and user experience design. However, the piecemeal manner in which functionality is introduced into the overall system necessitates developing a concept model early to guide consistent design and define reusable interaction patterns. 

---