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Given the need to simultaneously implement lean and agile (LeAgile) paradigms in supply chain, managers do not know which of these paradigms practices should be given priority. Not knowing this, not only will they fail to apply these paradigms properly, but they will also waste significant financial resources. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the practices of LeAgile paradigms and their effects on the supply chain performance.

Because the military products play a key role in national security enhancement, this research is done in the military product supply chain. Research methodology is an exploratory, mixed and descriptive one. In terms of its purpose, it is an applied research based on identifying and searching for practices and the use of interpretive equations. First, the authors identify the most important and implementable LeAgile practices in the form of importance feasibility analysis matrices. Then, using fuzzy interpretative structural modeling, a model is presented to show the logical relationships and hierarchy between paradigms, practices and their impact on supply chain performance. The research tool in both main stages of the research was the questionnaire completed by industrial and academic experts. The selection of experts was done purposefully.

The results show that of total 100 practices introduced in the previous research for LeAgile supply chain, 21 practices in the lean and agility of the supply chain of military industries are important and implementable. The final model of this study illustrates the hierarchical relationships between 21 practices and its effect on supply chain performance key measures. This model shows that LeAgile paradigms are intertwined and their simultaneous implementation leads to improved supply chain performance. In this model, supplier-related practices play a driving and fundamental role and become a top priority for implementation.

Military products variation in land, air and sea areas and the large number of industries in each sectors, forced us to select the only land area. Although the results of this research can be used in the air and sea areas, one cannot say that Implementation of this study by its presented model will fully lead to the military industries supply chain (SC) lean and agility in air and sea sectors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research on the SC legality in Iran’s military industry which tries to apply these two paradigms simultaneously in the SC and bridge the gap between theory and practice. Clustering LeAgile practices, based on two measures of importance and feasibility, and defining four strategies for implementing these measures, is a new approach to focus on deploying practices that are currently more feasible. Identifying a significant number of SC LeAgile practices (100 practices) and demonstrating the interactions between important and feasible practices in the military products SC are another innovation in this research.

The purpose of this study is to critically examine the scholarly articles associated with the diverse aspects of supply chain agility (SCA). The review highlights research insights, existing gaps and future research directions that can help academicians and practitioners gain a comprehensive understanding of SCA.

The present study has adopted author co-citation analysis as the research methodology, with a view to thoroughly investigating the good-quality articles related to SCA that have been published over a period of 22 years (1999-2020). In this study, 126 research papers on SCA – featuring diverse aspects of agility – from various reputed journals have been examined, analysed and assimilated.

The salient findings of this research are, namely, agility is different from other similar concepts, such as flexibility, leanness, adaptability and resilience; of the 13 dimensions of agility discussed in the literature, the prominent ones are quickness, responsiveness, competency and flexibility; literature related to SCA can be categorised as related to modelling the enablers, agility assessment, agility implementation, leagility and agility maximisation. This research proposes a more practical definition and framework for SCA. The probable areas for future research are, namely, impediments to agility, effective approaches to agility assessment, cost-benefit trade-offs to be considered whilst implementing agility, empirical research to validate the framework and SCA in the domain of healthcare and disaster relief supply chains.

This paper provides substantial insights to practitioners who primarily focus on measuring and implementing agility in the supply chain. The findings of this study will help the supply chain manager gain a better idea about how to become competitive in today’s dynamic and turbulent business environment.

The originality of this study is in: comprehensively identifying the various issues related to SCA, such as related concepts, definitions, dimensions and different categories of studies covered in literature, proposing a new definition and framework for SCA and identifying potential areas for future research, to provide deeper insights into the subject and highlight areas for future research.

Agility is the ability of an organization to adjust its supply chain tactics and operations to respond quickly against altering business environments such as fluctuating demand pattern, supply chain disruption and global competition. An agile organization must possess a promising capability of swiftly responding to dynamic conditions while being cost-effective without compromising the efficiency. Such high-performance adaptability necessitates the role of supply chain managers to maximize the agility of the supply chain through the efficient use of input resources. Therefore, the purpose of this study to reveal a new decision support tool that would allow the key decision-makers to maximize the agility of the supply chain while deploying the input resources more effectively.

In present study, an integrated approach of popular analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and goal programming (GP) has been adopted as a potential solution methodology. AHP has been implemented to allocate the local and global weights to decision variables, whereas GP incorporates the AHP weights into the desired model.

It was found that the proposed decision support tool restricts the value of the decision variables for maximizing the agility and optimizing the usage of input resources. The results obtained from the model validate the objective of achieving targeted agility level within the available resource limitations.

The decision support tool developed in the proposed study offers a systematic and effectively simple approach to supply chain managers with a goal of identifying the degree of focus under each decision variable in the respective manufacturing organizations.

A novel decision support tool has been developed known as an agility control system), which helps the decision-maker to achieve the required agility in the supply chain by controlling the decision variables.

This research seeks to undertake a comparative study of Chinese distribution centers (DCs) with UK DCs in order to explore the relationship between the supply chain, logistics and distribution functions, and the gap between the countries. The study has been undertaken in light of Chinese corporate standardization programs in distribution channels. The main goal of the standardization programs has been to create efficient supply chains to be able to control the flow of information, capital, product and other resources. The focus of the study was Fujian Province where the standardization program has meant that functional areas such as marketing and distribution are measured by key performance indicators (KPI), under specific evaluation keys. The study highlights benchmarked KPIs where supply chain entrepreneurship can be brought to bear.

The method used in this research is quantitative via a small scale sample. Questionnaires were sent to Chinese DCs in Fujian Province with additional quantitative information sought through telephone follow‐up.

The data have been analyzed and compared to UK DCs for inventory level, order lead‐times, customer segmentation, value‐added activities, and floor area utilization. DCs are a long way from internationally competitive best practice across complex product categories. This provides opportunity for entrepreneurial third party inventory storage and management. DCs also exhibits low transportation efficiency due to low vehicle loading factors, also affecting DC order lead‐time efficiency and value‐added activities. There is opportunity here for entrepreneurial activity in offering efficient (lean) and responsive (agile) third party transport services. There is also evidence of poor process management implying opportunity for the application of entrepreneurial consulting capability to resource and reengineer end‐end process chains.

The research generalisability is limited due its small scale sample in a single Chinese province.

Despite a modernization program the implications of this study are that Chinese DCs are not ready for traditional international competition, but in the short‐term entrepreneurs may be able to design sustainable lean and agile supply chains that are at least as good as those in the UK.

The study's originality is its comparative benchmark of Chinese with UK DCs.

The present study aims to empirically investigate whether supply chain agility and lean management practices are antecedents of supply chain social sustainability.

Data were collected from 311 supply chain practitioners from the Indian manufacturing sector. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to test the validity and reliability of the measures used, and a structural model was analyzed to test the hypotheses of the current study.

The results indicate that agility and lean practices are significant antecedents of social sustainability orientation as well as social sustainability performance. The results also suggest that agility has a significant indirect effect on operational performance via social sustainability orientation, basic social sustainability practices as well as agility is indirectly affecting social sustainability performance via social sustainability orientation and basic social sustainability practices.

The results of the present study have implications for managers that want to make their supply chain more socially sustainable.

The study is unique in the sense that it empirically links agility and lean practices with social sustainability orientation, social substantiality performance and operational performance in supply chains.

Manufacturers have experienced many stages of evolution and paradigm shift. The paradigm shifts from crafts to mass production, then to lean production, and finally to agile manufacturing (AM). Agility will reduce the time to market for appropriate products and services. Twenty-first century companies must meet a demanding customer base that will increasingly seek high quality, low-cost products adapted to their specific and continually evolving needs. It is time for companies to compete, and “push the boundaries” in response to delivery, product quality, and overall excellence in customer service and satisfaction. For addressing these challenges, a new way to manage businesses was proposed called “Agility,” AM is defined as the ability to survive in a competitive environment characterized by the continual and unpredictable changes, by responding effectively to the changing markets with products and services designed by the customer. This chapter presents a review of research related to the agility concept through an analysis of the variously proposed studies. This analysis was conducted based on a meta-model of three words (Agility, Management, and Organization).

This paper aims to explore the divergences and commitments between the lean, agile, resilient and green paradigms while investigating the effect of paradigms' practices within supply chain attributes.

A conceptual model with lean, agile, resilient and green practices and supply chain management attributes is proposed. Causal diagrams were used to represent the relationships between paradigm practices and supply chain attributes. The four diagrams were aggregated to build the conceptual model.

The conceptual model allows for the identification of synergies and divergences resulting from the paradigms practices implementation. The synergies between paradigms are related to “information frequency” and “integration level” increasing as well as reduction of “production lead time” and “transportation lead time”. However, other supply chain attributes such as “capacity surplus”, “inventory level” and “replenishment frequency” are affected in opposite directions by some paradigms creating divergences.

The model relationships were established using an anecdotal approach derived from the literature review, reflecting only a partial view of supply chain dynamics. More research related to other supply chain attributes and/or paradigm practices, and validation of the proposed relationships is suggested.

The proposed model can be the basis for further research in lean, agile, resilient and green paradigms, contributing to a more sustainable and competitive lean supply chain with the necessary agility toward a quick response, resiliency to disruptions, and harmonization with the ecologic and environmental aspects.

To the authors' knowledge this paper is the first to provide an understanding about the tradeoffs among lean, agile, resilient and green supply chain paradigms.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a lean, agile, resilient, and green (LARG) index as a benchmarking tool to assess the leanness, agility, resilience and the greenness of the automotive companies and corresponding supply chain (SC).

The proposed index incorporates LARG supply chain management paradigms and corresponding practices being both weighted according to their importance for the automotive SC sustainability. The Delphi technique is used to obtain the weights for each SC paradigm and a linear aggregated method is proposed. A case study approach related to the automotive SC is chosen to illustrate the LARG index application.

The case study results confirmed the usefulness and ease of application of LARG index in a real world SC. The application of the suggested index to a set of companies, and consequently to their SC, makes possible to identify: the better and worst performer company in each paradigm, the LARG practices with higher levels of application among the companies, the LARG index for each company and also for the corresponding SC. This becomes an important benchmarking tool since comparative analysis regarding the LARG behaviours are possible to perform with the suggested index.

More LARG practices could be considered to improve the robustness of the index. Future studies should be conducted across more companies for improving the effectiveness of the approach, and more members should be included in the panel of Delphi technique for enhancing the validity of the suggested approach.

SC companies will be able to assess their performance in terms of leanness, agility, resilience and greenness. A study like this could encourage all automotive companies to benchmark their organizations as regards their competitors, the best in class, and also the industry average.

This paper contributes to the literature by introducing a new index for measuring the leanness, agility, resilience and greenness of companies and SCs. This index can be used by managers as a benchmarking tool to identify their LARG behaviour and compare it with their SC partners and seek for improvement.

The objective of this paper is to provide a deeper insight into the relationship of the issue “lean vs agile” in order to inform managers towards more coherent decisions especially in a dynamic, unpredictable, uncertain, non‐linear environment.

The methodology is an exploratory study based on secondary data analysis.

“Lean” and “agile” are two exclusive concepts “in the limit” and “agile” has a higher potential for serving as an instrument for starting “a journey” towards a new sustainable organizational paradigm.

Further research in the context of the arguments presented is necessary, especially in the “field” and on primary data.

There are clearly indicated contexts of primary applications of “lean” and “agile”, and especially along with the techniques, methodologies and system‐thinking informed by chaordic system thinking (CST), which should be of help for managers.

The novel contribution of the paper is the presentation of the argumentation on “lean” and “agile” as exclusive concepts and their analysis through the CST lenses, as well as the presentation of suggestions for development of new manufacturing systems paradigms.

With the current global downturn, companies must develop new and innovative approaches to ensure that economic sustainability is achieved. The purpose of this paper is to propose a Fit Manufacturing Framework (FMF), the adoption of which can help manufacturing companies to become economically sustainable and operate effectively in a global competitive market. This contribution extends the previous work by the authors and provides an evolution on the initial work through enhancing the development of Fit manufacture through developing a more robust framework and a more comprehensive functional testing of the framework.

The proposed FMF provides a new manufacturing management perspective and a new manufacturing management strategy for creating economically sustainable manufacturing organisations. It builds upon the principles of existing manufacturing paradigms, along with innovative management concepts, to set up the conditions necessary for sustainability. A pilot application of the framework in three SMEs shows positive initial results when assessed against four Measures of Performance.

Manufacturing strategies such as Lean and Agility allow companies to deliver bottom‐line savings in production terms, although their effectiveness depends upon the volume and demand profile of their products. The trend towards mass customisation requires companies to provide personalised products and services at mass production prices. This now places a further burden on companies and therefore a holistic manufacturing framework must be developed in order to ensure that the factory of the future is able to meet this new demand. This paper proposes a Fit manufacturing paradigm which integrates the manufacturing efficiencies achieved through Lean and Agility with the need to break into new markets through effective marketing and product innovation strategies to achieve long term economic sustainability. The small‐scale application of the approach in a case company shows the initial results to be positive when measured against key MOPs developed within this paper.

The development of a Fit paradigm aimed at tackling directly the issues of economic sustainability is proposed and is considered by the authors as one of a kind. Fit will also provide a framework for the implementation of sustainable manufacturing operations within organisations.