Studies on some aspects of agility appraisement: empirical research and case studies in Indian perspective

The thesis highlights decision-making problems in relation to agility evaluation as well as appraisement of agile enterprises followed be suppliers’ selection in agile supply chain. Various aspects have been covered (i) Supply Chain Agility Appraisement and (ii) Appraisement of Agility in Mass Customized Product Manufacturing (iii) Organizational Agility and Benchmarking of Agile Enterprises, (iv) Interrelationship amongst Agile Capabilities/Enablers, (v) Identification of Agile Barriers etc. Appraisement modules (appraisement index systems) have been proposed utilizing the concept of generalized fuzzy numbers, Interval-Valued Fuzzy Numbers (IVFNs) as well as grey numbers. The study provides in-depth understanding on hierarchical interrelationship amongst various agility dimensions required to assess organizational as well as supply chain agility. Agility appraisement modules have been proposed to perform both in fuzzy as well as grey environment. Agility barriers have been identified as well. The outcome of the empirical research as well as case study conducted in two Indian industries (automotive and railway construction at eastern India) have been critically analyzed. The influence of decision-makers’ risk bearing attitude over agility assessment and related decision-making has also been focused in this work. An efficient fuzzy embedded performance appraisement module has been proposed to facilitate suppliers’ evaluation cum selection process in agile supply chain. There exist a number of agility indices (metrics) that influence the extent of organizational agility. By evaluating these indices, appropriate ranking order of alternative agile enterprises can be determined. This being the basic fundamental of Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), it can effectively be explored towards benchmarking of agile enterprises. Evaluating the candidate agile alternatives and comparing across them, the best practices of the efficient organization can easily be identified and transferred to different organizations. Indian manufacturing industries prefer to maintain status-quo and hardly go for changes (or transformation). However, today’s market compulsion due to liberalization and globalization of demands that manufacturing firms must be agile enough to serve continuously changing unpredicted needs of the customers in an effective manner. The changes in terms of being agile are not easy enough due to several environmental, managerial and technical considerations. Analysis of drivers of agile manufacturing and their interaction with various aspects in integrative planning can be a valuable source of information to the decision-makers (DMs) for its successful implementation. In doing so, the managers can derive important insights into the problem and explore the said drivers efficiently to overcome those obstacles. Agility evaluation problem can be viewed as a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem involving qualitative as well as quantitative evaluation criterions. Quantitative criterions (attributes) can be tackled by traditional tools and approaches. Difficulty arises in dealing with subjective qualitative selection criterions. In this thesis, fuzzy logic (as well as grey theory) has been proposed to tackle decision-makers’ subjective information/judgment in relation to agility appraisement and related decision-making vi problems. Literature is rich enough in addressing various decision-modeling problems using generalized fuzzy numbers; therefore, fruitful incorporation of Interval-Valued Fuzzy Numbers theory and grey theory definitely added value (contribution) pursued in data analysis (empirical as well as case studies) in this thesis. Use of ‘Fuzzy Degree of Similarity’ concept in identifying weak (ill-performing) areas (called agile barriers) in an agile supply chain appears to be a unique contribution in this work.