Title: Characteristics of
Agility in SMEs
Abstract: The need for
organisations to be flexible to meet the rapidly changing requirements
of their customers is now well appreciated and can be witnessed within
companies with their use of techniques such as single-minute exchange
of die (SMED) for machine change-over or Kanban as the visual
production and inventory control for Just-in-time manufacture and
delivery. What is not so well appreciated by companies is the need for
agility. Put simply it is the need to be alert for a new and unexpected
opportunity and quick to respond with the changes necessary in order to
profit from it. This paper will describe ongoing research
into the characteristics of Agility. Research that has led to the
development of a questionnaire which identifies the key areas of
agility and that is designed to identify, for participating
organisations, the degree to which they already possess the
characteristics of agility. This paper will report on the preliminary
findings from the responses received from the use of this questionnaire
in a survey of over hundred small and medium sized manufacturing
organisations (SME’s) and will hypothesize on how the information that
this has provided can be used to develop a methodology for assisting
SME’s in improving their future competitiveness by becoming more agile.
Author: Adel Hejaaji