Agile Manufacturing: A road map for agility assessment, mapping and enhancement of total agility level

Today, the manufacturers who successfully implement ‘Agile Manufacturing’ (AM) are able to thrive in globalized market environments. Companies belonging to electronic industry, particularly television and mobile phone manufacturers are few of such examples. These manufacturers exhibit their agile capabilities by producing variety of models with innovative features within a very short period. Hence, these manufacturers are able to face the competition despite the arrival of many competitors. In spite of its dissemination among researchers and practitioners, AM paradigm is applied at slower pace in the manufacturing of traditional engineering products such as air-conditioners, compressors, air dryers, generators, motors and refrigerators. It is high time that, the manufacturing companies of these traditional products need to acquire AM characteristics at a higher pace to face the onslaught of competition. In order to initiate researches in this direction, the doctoral work reported in this book was carried out to examine the implementation of AM paradigm in the production of refrigeration and regenerative air dryers.