Knowledge-based Measurement of Enterprise Agility

One essential requirement for business survival is the continuous ability to meet customer needs and demands. Market needs cause unceasing changes in product(s) life cycle, shape, quality, and price. Agility is an enterprise-wide response to an increasingly competitive and changing business environment, based on four cardinal principles: enrich the customer; master change and uncertainty; leverage human resources; and cooperate to compete [1], [2]. Agility is more formally defined as the ability of an enterprise to operate profitably in a rapidly changing and continuously fragmenting global market environment by producing high-quality, high-performance, customer-configured goods and services. It is the outcome of technological achievement, advanced organizational and managerial structure and practice, but also a product of human abilities, skills, and motivations [2]. The application of agile manufacturing methods started in the late 1980s as a response to competition from Japan and the other Pacific Rim area countries. Some of these methods include just-in-time manufacturing, flexible manufacturing systems, computer and communication networks. Several programs and initiatives started to help U.S. companies change their organization and production processes [2]. Such programs include the Department of Energy’s (DoE) Demand Activated Manufacturing Architecture [11] (textile/apparel industries), Technologies Enabling Agile Manufacturing (TEAM) [12], etc. In addition, several Agile Manufacturing Research Institutes (AMRIs) have already been established, like the Aerospace Agile Manufacturing Research Center, the