Purpose Agile practices are important for executing business dealings proficiently in today’s scenario, as they thrust on implicating strategies for meeting quick market requirements. These practices are noteworthy from the point of competitiveness and for fulfilling customer’s demands speedily and promptly. The purpose of this paper is to appraise agile supplier selection dilemma based on analytical hierarchy process (AHP), which accompanied grey information. The authors drafted a group of momentous agile supplier selection measures, which can be utilized by the group of industrial and manufacturing industries to measure the status of agile parameters in their partner firms. G-TOPSIS approach to handling the case of agile supplier selection problem is presented by the authors in this work. Design/methodology/approach The conception of AHP, grey theory and TOPSIS techniques is fused in this study, under the application arena of agile supply chain management (ASCM). The AHP principals are implicated in the first phase to define the priority importance weights of agile measures and, additionally, grey theory and TOPSIS principals are fused in the second phase to fabricate a significant agile supplier selection model. Findings A merged approach accompanying multiple measures is developed for aiding decision making and for modeling qualitative characteristics of agile arena under grey domain. The present work can be utilized to access the agile performance characteristics of the organization and can define the status of their partner suppliers. The technical guidelines of AHP and G-TOPSIS approach are explained in this study to be implicated in distinguish decision fields. An educational podium for dispensing the theoretical knowledge on supply chain management, ASCM and agility is presented in this study. Originality/value A second-level hierarchical structure is built by the authors to facilitate the managers in taking effective decision pertaining to agile measure in their organizations. The lists of qualitative characteristics are catalogued from the literature review in this study. The built model can undertake risk associated in defining the nature of agile criterions as grey concept can undertake risk associated with the system. Thus, the authors implicated G-TOPSIS approach to handling the case of agile supplier selection problem in this study. The presented hierarchical structure will capably assist the industrial and manufacturing firms to react toward random and unpredictable market requirements, along with attaining organizations goals and profits.