Assessment of Supply Chain Agility to Foster Sustainability: Fuzzy-DSS for a Saudi Manufacturing Organization

Abstract

Supply chain agility and sustainability is an essential element for the long-term survival and success of a manufacturing organization. Agility is an organization’s ability to respond rapidly to customers’ dynamic demands and volatile market changes. In a dynamic business environment, manufacturing firms demand agility to be evaluated to support any alarming decision. Sustainability is an aspect to sustain collaboration, value creation, and survival of firms under a dynamic competitive business scenario. Agility is a capability that drives competitiveness to foster sustainability aspects. The purpose of this article is to consider and evaluate the supply chain behavior within the context of Saudi enterprises. The efficacy and relevance of this model were explored through a case study conducted in a Saudi dairy manufacturing corporation. Owing to the complexity and a large number of calculations that are required for evaluating the agility of the supply chain, a decision support system was proposed as a tool to assess the supply chain and identifying barriers to a strategic sustainable solution for a specific organizational target. The decision support system is extensive as it contains six separate agility enablers and ninety-three agility attributes for the supply chain. The assessment was carried out using a fuzzy multi-criteria method. It combines the performance rating and importance weight of each agile supply chain-enabler-attribute. To achieve and sustain local and global success, the case organization strove to become a major local and global manufacturer to satisfy its customers, reduce its time to market, lower its total ownership costs, and boost its overall competitiveness through improving its agility across supply chain activities to foster sustainability for a manufacturing organization located in Saudi Arabia.

Gaining Supply Chain Resilience and Performance Sustainability through Supply Chain Agility in Furniture SMEs in Yogyakarta

“…That is, there is a positive and significant influence of supply chain agility on the sustainability of supply chain performance, this provides evidence that H2 in this study is accepted. The results of this study are also supported by previous research found that supply chain agility has a positive effect on the sustainability of the supply chain performance (Nath & Agrawal, 2020;Perera et al, 2014;Rehman et al, 2020). The results of this study found that furniture SMEs that can quickly run their operational processes will be superior to their competitors, and this can have an impact on the sustainability of supply chain performance in the future.…”

“…In a dynamic business environment, the furniture industry demands supply chain agility be evaluated to support any worrisome decisions in the midst of a pandemic or post-pandemic because agility is an ability that encourages competitiveness to foster sustainability aspects. Several previous studies have also shown the influence of supply chain agility on the sustainability of supply chain performance (Nath & Agrawal, 2020;Perera et al, 2014;Rehman et al, 2020). Predicated on the explanation above, this study has a necessary purpose to examine and review "the role of supply chain agility in influencing the sustainability of supply chain performance and supply chain resilience".…”

“…Supply chain agility and sustainability are serious and crucial elements for the survival and longterm success of an industry (Rehman et al, 2020). In a dynamic business environment, the furniture industry demands supply chain agility be evaluated to support any worrisome decisions in the midst of a pandemic or post-pandemic because agility is an ability that encourages competitiveness to foster sustainability aspects.…”

An empirical investigation and prioritization of barriers toward implementation of agile manufacturing in the manufacturing industry

“…The rapid industrialization lays the foundation for the emergence of new innovative methods and tools like agile manufacturing (Lokhande and Sarode, 2020). Agile manufacturing is best suitable for the market situations with product characteristics like high variety, small volume, short life cycle, product specification–based competition and higher profit margins (Rehman et al , 2020). Agile manufacturing is not about small-scale continuous improvements but an entirely different way of doing business (Kidd, 1994; Gunasekaran, 1998).…”

“…Agility encourages competitiveness to cultivate sustainability (Rehman et al , 2020). Shekarian et al (2020) suggested internal and external integration with potential suppliers and customers as the key predecessors to achieve agility.…”