The relationships among virtual enterprise, information technology, and business performance in agile manufacturing: An industry perspective

Agile Manufacturing (AM) is a manufacturing paradigm that focuses on smaller scale, modular production facilities, and agile operations capable of dealing with turbulent and changing environments. From several enablers of AM, Virtual Enterprise (VE) and Information Technology (IT) were chosen. This empirical study explored the impact of the alignment between VE and IT on business performance in an AM setting for five different industries. Extensive data collection strategy and several tests were used to establish the reliability and validity of the data collected. Extensive analyses of the data using Structural Equation Modeling were performed for five hypotheses across five different industries. The results indicate that both VE and IT had positive influences on business performance for all industries. It was also established that the alignment between VE and IT had a positive impact on business performance for all industries. Further, it was shown that the impact of the alignment between VE and IT on business performance was more significant than the impact of VE and IT on business performance individually for all industries. The statistical analyses and results showed that there were no significant differences among the industries surveyed. At the bivariate level of analysis, some minor differences for one industry were highlighted. In conclusion, the assessment of the results along with future research directions is provided. 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.