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Purpose According to the authors research, Agile approaches are increasingly being deployed successfully alongside phase-gate processes in engineering and R&D functions outside software, with a very positive result. Design/methodology/approach An Agile approach to product development has been a mainstay of the software industry since the turn of the century. In recent years, some non-software product-based companies have successfully combined both Agile and non-Agile methods in a complementary way to pursue breakthrough innovation. The article reports on how to make this combination work. Findings The study found companies adopting two general approaches when trying to introduce Agile into an existing phase-gate process: integrating Agile into a single innovation process or adding a partly parallel Agile path. Practical implications As a measure of Agile’s potential, the software industry has consistently produced patents at three times the level of the next-most prolific sectors. Originality/value Arthur D. Little’s research reveals that companies that have successfully added Agile methods to their toolboxes and tailor their innovation approaches by the type of innovation – incremental or breakthrough–perform significantly better than those that stick to single phase-gate approach.

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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present and test a methodology, extending the concept of hierarchical Petri nets, to discover conflicts in a distribution channel.Design/methodology/approachThe approach involves linking different levels of the supply chain and detecting conflicts occurring when the single entities, each optimized for its own operations, are combined together in a supply chain. Specifically, a methodology is proposed for synthesizing individual Petri Net models combined with matrix equations in order to detect and manage conflicts in a supply chain. These conflicts may stem from differing goals, planning and resources.FindingsThe methodology offers the user the ability to investigate the potential for conflicts in the system and manage the system to avoid such conflicts before they occur. The proposed approach holds promise for both the short term and long term for effective supply chain management and design. This would enable the supply chain to put sufficient protection (e.g. buffers) in strategic locations relative to the potential conflict or contingency plans in place to handle the conflict when it occurs.Originality/valueWhile the ability to discover and pre‐empt conflicts would be a valuable asset to the management and design of supply chains, there is little insight found, to date, in the research on effective methods to realize detection. The current paper provides a systematic approach through the development of a hierarchical Petri net extension to detect conflicts prior to occurrence in an integrated supply chain system.

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