Steel Product Design Manufacturing - A Case Study in Agility

摘要

This paper focuses on the concept of agility in supply chains and development procedure in the move toward an agile supply chain in the context of Finnish steel product industry. This paper also discusses the drivers that generate the pressure for implementing agility. To be truly agile, a supply chain must be market sensitive, virtual and network based, and it must be capable of leveraging process integration. The industry network in question is at the beginning of its strive toward agility. It is concluded that some aspects of agility, such as efforts to form a network-based entity and a move toward a more market sensitive approach could already clearly be recognized in the steel industry network. With others, for instance, achieving process integration at its full potential and being completely able to impose agility in the network, there is still a long way to go and a lot of work to do.