Agile Supply Chain Management

Creating agile supply chains is of utmost importance to stay competitive. However, making supply chain operations agile or transforming networks towards an agile form is often challenging for most organizations. This chapter focuses on the agility concept in supply chains. The chapter overviews agile supply chain studies focused on developing models or frameworks for supply chain agility. A comprehensive collection of studies is summarized along with discussing the components of previously developed models or frameworks. The chapter further presents a section about the implementation of supply chain agility in different industries. Manufacturing, automotive, and construction industry examples are discussed. After discussing agility in different industries, the chapter provides emergent concerns and outstanding research areas to direct potential researchers and industry practitioners in terms of assessing supply chain agility. Main research areas on supply chain agility were demonstrated as the integration of supply chain agility with organizational operations, barriers to supply chain agility implementation, and the relation between supply chain agility and performance. To complement, managerial implications are summarized.