Agile Manufacturing: Development of a Tool to Assist in Implementation of Agility within Manufacturing Small and Medium Size Organisations

Among the greatest challenges facing manufacturers are related to their ability to cope with change, manufacturing small and medium size enterprises or SMEs facing the same challenge and change which have deep impact on SMEs situation in the market. Managing planned change is difficult in itself. However, managing unplanned change demands the ability to react faster and use new strategies to match market conditions, and customer demands in a way that maintains or creates competitive advantage. Therefore manufacturing SMEs need agility for handling unanticipated change occurring at the early stage of product development cycle and to be able to face the continuous and unanticipated change. Manufacturing SMEs need a methodology to adopt agility to stay competitive in the market place and face these changes and challenges. This book provides a practical tool for implementation Agility in small and medium size manufacturing SMEs.