On the dynamics of Agile/Virtual Enterprise reconfiguration

Today, competitive pressures require companies to be very fast in introducing new products, to have short production lead times to manufacture and deliver products to customers and to be permanently aligned with the market. Product life-cycles tend to shorten. Even the dynamically reconfigurable global networked structures corresponding to the recent approach of the Agile/Virtual Enterprise (A/VE) organisational model tend to last a shorter time while becoming more dynamic in their structural reconfiguration. The ability of fast reconfigurability is a requirement that the enterprises corresponding to this A/VE model must satisfy to assure a permanent alignment of the network with the market as highlighted in the paper. However, two factors against networking and dynamics are identified: leakage of firm's private knowledge and reconfiguration costs. The paper defines and discusses the main concepts and features concerning reconfiguration dynamics to help quantify, analyse and manage reconfigurability dynamics. Two reconfigurability hypotheses are also proposed and validated.