Evaluation of manufacturing firms for agility

Manufacturing firms have great interest in developing flexible and agile manufacturing systems (FMS/AMS) to cope for competences. Agile manufacturing systems are a manufacturing philosophy that integrates technology, people, manufacturing strategy, and management systems. Although agility is the set of capabilities and competences that the manufacturing firms need to thrive and prosper in a continuously changing and unpredictable business environment, measuring the level of agility in these firms is still unexplored according to the capabilities and competences. In embracing AMS, there are many important questions to be asked concerning a firm's agility level and how to assist in achieving enhancing agility more effectively. In this paper, an evaluation model will be proposed to measure the agility level of the manufacturing firms based on technologies, people, manufacturing strategy, and management systems and business process. A complete case study will be presented.