MODELING LEAN, AGILE, AND LEAGILE SUPPLY CHAIN STRATEGIES

Many companies are using lean management and agility strategies to reduce costs, improve customer service and advance their competitive position. Lean thinking emphasizes the elimination of waste while agility stresses flexible, timely action in response to rapidly changing demand. While lean and agile supply chain strategies are often viewed as opposites, this paper supports the view that they do not necessarily compete and in fact can be employed simultaneously through a so-called "leagile" approach. Lean, agile and leagile strategies are illustrated by modeling their respective applications at a tier-1 supplier to the heating, ventilating and air-conditioning industry. Simulation analyses indicate that the lean system improves customer service performance while the leagile system results in lower enterprise-wide inventory levels under modeled circumstances. Analyses of the model output with regard to enterprise-wide costs and the sensitivity of the strategies to varying cost conditions suggests that tradeoffs exist among the three systems.