AGILE MANUFACTURING: KEY ISSUES(DRAFT 3 REV2)

By : Sashi Prabhu.

1. Introduction

Manufacturing sector is on the verge of a major paradigm shift. This shift will move us
away from mass production, way beyond lean manufacturing, into a world of Agile
Manufacturing. Furthermore, at this point in time, Agile Manufacturing is not well
understood and the conceptual aspects are still being defined. Agile Manufacturing is
viewed as another programme of the month, and to use the term Agile Manufacturing as
just another way of describing lean production, flexible manufacturing .

Many companies today are under going transformations - reengineering business

processes, flattening hierarchies, empowering people, implementing lean production
concepts, etc. The laundry list is almost endless. But none of these massive
transformations, on their own or taken collectively, constitutes the implementation of
Agile Manufacturing. What Agile Manufacturing really represents is the potential for a
quantum leap forward in manufacturing. Instead of just chasing after the Japanese by
copying their techniques in a prescriptive fashion, or implementing our own
prescriptions, in Agile Manufacturing we should be trying to achieve a competitive lead
by doing something that our competitors are not doing or intending to do in the near
future. This I believe is will be our cutting edge…………………

Agile Manufacturing is something that many of our business houses have yet to fully
comprehend, never mind implement. Agile Manufacturing is likely to be the way
business will be conducted in the next century. It is not yet a reality. Our challenge is to
make it a reality, first by more fully defining the conceptual aspects, and secondly by
venturing into the frontier of sucessfull implementation.

In this paper we will examine some of the key issues relevant to the development of
Agile Manufacturing. Owing to space limitations a very brief overview of Agile
Manufacturing.

2. Definition and Concepts

The problem with a new idea such as Agile Manufacturing is the lack of a good sound
definition and a set of concepts that most people would agree upon.

Agile Manufacturing should primarily be seen as a business concept. Its aim is quite
simple - to put our company way ahead of our primary competitors. In Agile
Manufacturing our aim is to develop agile properties. We will then use this agility for
competitive advantage, by being able to rapidly respond to changes occurring in the
market environment and through our ability to use and exploit a fundamental resource
-knowledge.
One fundamental idea in the exploitation of this resource is the idea of using technologies
to lever the skills and knowledge of our people. We need to bring our people together, in
dynamic teams formed around clearly identified market opportunities, so that it becomes
possible to lever one another's knowledge. Through these processes we should seek to
achieve the transformation of knowledge and ideas into new products and services, as
well as improvements to our existing products and services.

The concept of Agile Manufacturing is also built around the synthesis of a number of
enterprises that each have some core skills or competencies which they bring to a joint
venturing operation, which is based on using each partners facilities and resources. For
this reason, these joint venture enterprises are called virtual corporations, because they do
not own significant capital resources of their own. This, it is believed, will help them to
be agile, as they can be formed and changed very rapidly.

Central to the ability to form these joint ventures is the deployment of advanced
information technologies and the development of highly nimble organisational structures
to support highly skilled, knowledgeable and empowered people.

Agile Manufacturing enterprises are expected to be capable of rapidly responding to

changes in customer demand. They should be able to take advantage of the windows of
opportunities that, from time to time, appear in the market place. With Agile
Manufacturing we should also develop new ways of interacting with our customers and
suppliers. Our customers will not only be able to gain access to our products and services,
but will also be able to easily assess and exploit our competencies, so enabling them to
use these competencies to achieve the things that they are seeking.

3. Some Key Issues in Agile Manufacturing

3.1 The "I am a Horse" Syndrome

There is an old saying that hanging a sign on a cow that says "I am a horse" does not
make it a horse. There is a real danger that Agile Manufacturing will fall prey to the
unfortunate tendency in manufacturing circles to follow fashion and to relabel everything
with a new fashionable label. The dangers in this are two fold. First, it will give Agile
Manufacturing a bad reputation. Second, instead of getting to grips with the profound
implications and issues raised by Agile Manufacturing, management will only acquire a
superficial understanding, which leaves them vulnerable to those competitors that take
Agile Manufacturing seriously. Of course this is good news for the competitors!

One sure way to fail with Agile Manufacturing is to hang a new sign up. Get smart, resist
the temptation, and put the paint brush away.

3.2 The Existing Culture of Manufacturing

One of the important things that is likely to hold us back from making a quantum leap
forward and exploring this new frontier of Agile Manufacturing, is the baggage of our
traditions, conventions and our accepted values and beliefs. A key success factor is,
without any doubt, the ability to master both the soft and hard issues in change
management. However, if we are to achieve agility in our manufacturing enterprises, we
should first try to fully understand the nature of our existing cultures, values, and
traditions. We need to achieve this understanding, because we need to begin to recognise
and come to terms with the fact that much of what we have taken for granted, probably
no longer applies in the world of Agile Manufacturing. Achieving this understanding is
the first step in facing up to the pain of consigning our existing culture to the garbage can
of historically redundant ideas.

3.3 Understanding Agility

Agility is defined in dictionaries as quick moving, nimble and active. This is clearly not
the same as flexibility which implies adaptability and versatility. Agility and flexibility
are therefore different things.

Leanness (as in lean manufacturing ) is also a different concept to agility. Sometimes the
terms lean and agile are used interchangeably, but this is not appropriate. The term lean is
used because lean manufacturing is concerned with doing everything with less . In other
words, the excess of wasteful activities, unnecessary inventory, long lead times, etc are
cut away through the application of just-in-time manufacturing, concurrent engineering,
overhead cost reduction, improved supplier and customer relationships, total quality
management, etc.

We can also consider CIM in the same light. When we link computers across
applications, across functions and across enterprises we do not achieve agility. We might
achieve a necessary condition for agility, that is, rapid communications and the exchange
and reuse use of data, but we do not achieve agility.

Thus agility is not the same as flexibility, leanness or CIM. Understanding this point is
very important. But if agility is none of these things, then what is it? This is a good
question, and not one easily answered. Yet most of us would recognise agility if we saw
it.

For example, we would not say the a Sumo wrestler was agile. Nor would we think that
50 Sumo wrestlers, tied together by a complex web of chains and ropes, all pulling in
different directions, as agile. Quite the contrary. We would see them as lumbering, slow
and unresponsive. However, we would all recognise a ballet dancer as agile. We would
also think of a stage full of ballet dancers as agile, because what binds them together is
something quite different.

This analogy between Sumo wrestlers and ballet dancers is very relevant to
understanding the property of agility. Many of our corporations, to varying degrees,
resemble Sumo wrestlers, tied together, but all pulling in different directions. If we want
to develop agile properties, we need to understand what causes agility and what hinders
agility. Only when we have developed this understanding can we begin to think about
designing an agile enterprise. For, when we have such an understanding of the causes of
agility, we can start to audit out current situation, and identify what needs to be changed.

4. Concluding Remarks

We have spent much time copying the Japanese. Now we may be about to teach the
Japanese something. For a change, Indian manufacturing industry is realising that it has
very little to gain, in the long term, by copying what other people are doing. There is now
a growing realisation that global preeminence in manufacturing can only be achieved
through innovation. We can learn from others, but in a highly competitive world we can
only become world leaders if we develop new ideas that take us beyond the state-of-the-
art. Basically, the issue is, should we adopt lean manufacturing in our own enterprises,
i.e. should we mimic the Japanese, or should we do something different and better?

Without doubt there are a significant number of people who believe that we have to adopt
lean manufacturing. But in adopting this approach we run the risk of forever chasing after
a moving target. The Japanese will keep innovating. Thus, adopting lean manufacturing
can only be a short term measure aimed doing something to close the competitive gap. In
the longer term, if we want to catch up with and overtake the Japanese, lean
manufacturing is not the answer. What we need to do, is something which the Japanese
cannot do. That something may well be Agile Manufacturing.