Title: Application of goal programming to manage agility in manufacturing systems

Authors: P.G. Saleeshya, A. Subash Babu

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita University, Coimbatore, 641105, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, 400076, India

Abstract: This paper is related to a real life study carried out in Indian manufacturing organisations to assess the extent to which the agile manufacturing paradigm is recognised and deployed, as this paradigm has been a major objective of many companies. A multi-level framework developed by the authors along with a questionnaire was used to identify various enabling factors of agility in Indian manufacturing industries. The data collected from the industries was analysed by the model called objectivated agility realisation model (OARM) developed by the authors. This model helps to determine the measure of agility called |effectiveness index| (EI) at various hierarchical levels of an organisation. The authors also proposed an approach to measure the agility of manufacturing systems by combining the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodologies. The approaches of AHP, OARM and DEA are essentially in the category of diagnostic methods. Therefore, a need was felt to resort to an appropriate method, which may provide proper guidelines for deploying the enablers and also use a suitable method of optimisation. Goal programming method has been identified suitable to deal with this problem and the salient details of which is presented in this paper.

Keywords: analytical hierarchy process; AHP; data envelopment analysis; DEA; effectiveness index; key performance areas; objectivated agility realisation model; OARM; goal programming; agile manufacturing; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJASM.2011.040516

International Journal of Agile Systems and Management, 2011 Vol.4 No.3, pp.222 - 237

Received: 15 Oct 2010
Accepted: 27 Jan 2011
Published online: 01 Jun 2011 *

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