Title: Performance analysis of agile supply chain

Authors: Srikanta Routroy; Arjun Shankar

Addresses: Mechanical Engineering Department, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani (Rajasthan) – 333 031, India ' Cypress Semiconductor Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore – 560 093, India

Abstract: Agile supply chain (ASC) is considered to be the best alternative to serve difficult markets having uncertain demand, immature and innovative products, ever changing and increasing customer expectations, etc. Continuous performance evaluation is therefore necessary to ensure competitive advantage and business sustainability. Time pressures and difficulty in application to real time situations remain the major reasons for the limited usage of the many available models for measuring agility of ASC. Also, these approaches are not necessary if supply chain managers are only interested to know the agile performance enhancement along certain specified time horizons. Therefore, a methodology is proposed by combining fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and performance value analysis (PVA) to analyse ASC performance along specified time horizons. This proposed approach is applied to an apparel supply chain considering three time horizons and it was observed that there was significant improvement of ASC performance after two years.

Keywords: agile supply chains; ASCs; fuzzy AHP; analytical hierarchy process; FAHP; performance value analysis; PVA; supply chain agility; enablers; key performance indicators; KPIs; performance evaluation; supply chain management; SCM; apparel supply chains; apparel industry; garment industry; clothing industry.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMTM.2015.069255

International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management, 2015 Vol.29 No.3/4, pp.180 - 210

Received: 29 Apr 2014
Accepted: 04 Jul 2014

Published online: 06 May 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article