An Approach to Assess Sustainable Supply Chain Agility for a Manufacturing Organization

Abstract

Worldwide business organizations realize that agility of sustainable supply-chain is a requisite need for survival in a dynamic, competitive, and unpredictable market. The contribution of this research is to explore and evaluate sustainable agility in supply chains for a dairy manufacturing organization located in Saudi Arabia. Other contributions of this research are to update the literature about the different factors contributing to achieve agile supply chain, propose conceptual framework and assessment approach incorporating the relationships between sustainable supply-chain capabilities, enablers, and attributes, and shortlisting the agility barriers and how they would facilitate manufacturing organizations’ performance. The paper presents supply chain agility evaluation approach, which covers identification of agile supply-chain capabilities and drivers. It also presents a conceptual model and a framework to define agility level and barriers within the supply-chain. In the paper, fuzzy logic approach is preferred, owing to its capability to incorporate and deal with problems involving impreciseness and vagueness phenomena. Threshold-value in this study for the case organization is set to 0.24829. The outcome of the adopted approach indicates that 21 attributes performed below the threshold value; these attributes are further categorized as agility barriers. These are the barriers within their supply chain that impact the agility-level. For the case organization, the foremost priority is to enhance maintainability and serviceability to make it flexible and inexpensive to establish an agile responsive supply chain. At the same time, it should have priority to focus on development and integration of their core competencies to deal with cross-functional and cross-enterprise issues in supply chain. For the case organization, the agility level was found “very agile,” although it is below the “extremely agile.” Thus, a study was developed to understand the behaviour of the supply chain agility and assess/evaluate it to support decision makers in order to develop a strategic solution for different organizational barriers.

Key Approaches, Risks, and Product Performance in Managing the Development Process of Complex Products Sustainably

“…In the supply chain, Al-Zabidi et al [17] proposed an approach to assess sustainable agility in a manufacturing organization. They highlighted the relationships between sustainable supply-chain capabilities, enablers, and attributes.…”

“…Al-Zabidi et al [17] pointed out that digitalization in product design is one of the sustainable attributes that enable the realization of a sustainable supply chain. Al-Zabidi et al [17] also pointed out that quality design is a key attribute that is implemented in the design process in order to enable a sustainable supply chain. Several studies have seconded this conclusion [19][20][21].…”

Deploying Big Data Enablers to Strengthen Supply Chain Agility to Mitigate Bullwhip Effect: An Empirical Study of China’s Electronic Manufacturers

“…Shukor et al, 2020 highlighted an interactive relationship between supply chain agility and organizational flexibility, and supply chain integration positively impacts enterprise supply chain agility and organizational flexibility [76]. Rehman et al, 2020 andAl-Zabidi et al, 2021 believe that the driving factors of supply chain agility include six levels: organizational management, strategic management, information management, strategic commitment, customer sensitivity, and interpersonal competence [77,78]. Jindal et al, 2021 believe that the key indicators of agility are mainly divided into seven levels: infrastructure, supplier and customer information, analysis function, human resources, management decision-making power, operational flexibility, and time change [79].…”

The Ideas of Sustainable and Green Marketing Based on the Internet of Everything—The Case of the Dairy Industry

“…Using IoE technology, several sensors can communicate with a person or other devices and exchange data. In the case of implementing the IoE in the dairy industry (the whole supply chain [61]), the devices are present or will be present in homes (for example, smart stoves, smart TVs, etc.). IoE can be very useful for marketing in various industries, especially FMCG industries, because it can improve the e-shopping market and provide valuable features even for traditional users.…”

“…The dairy industry is a specific part of the FMCG industry because of (usually) the short expiration date of products, cold chain requirements, different consumers' habits, further access to milk, and many others [60,61,72]. Therefore, supply chain management in this industry requires reliable tools for managing the flows of goods [61]. IoT can deliver those, but its development and a growing number of integrated objects lead to the emergence of the IoE [69,71].…”