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: Agile Supply Chains

Turbulent and volatile markets are becoming the norm as lifecycles shorten and global economic and competitive forces create additional uncertainty. The risk attached to lengthy and slow-moving logistics pipelines has become unsustainable, forcing organisations to look again at how their supply chains are structured and managed.

The importance of time as a competitive weapon has been recognised for some time. The ability to be able to meet the demands of customers for ever shorter delivery times, and to ensure that supply can be synchronised to meet the peaks and troughs of demand, is clearly of critical importance in this era of time-based competition.

To become more responsive to the needs of the market requires more than speed. It also needs a high level of manouverability that today has come to be termed agility.

Agility is a supply chain wide capability that embraces organisational structures, information systems, logistics processes, and, in particular, mindsets. A key characteristic of an agile organisation is flexibility and the ability to change variety, volume and mix in short time frames.

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