Agility index of manufacturing firm-a fuzzy-logic-based approach

Ever-changing is one of firms´ major characteristics in this new competitive era. Agile manufacturing (AM) has been increasingly viewed as a winning strategy. In embracing AM, there are many important questions to be asked concerning a firm´s agility level and how to assist in achieving and enhancing agility more effectively. AM is an integration of technologies, people, facilities, information systems and business processes. Due to the ill-defined and ambiguous criteria which exist with agility assessment, most measures are described subjectively, and the classical assessment approaches cannot suitably nor effectively be applied. However, fuzzy-logic is a very powerful tool to deal with vague and incomplete data. Thus the focus in this paper is development of an absolute agility index, a unique and unprecedented attempt in agility measurement, using fuzzy-logic. In addition, an example is given to illustrate the use of this method.