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

Author

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  • Ayoub Al-Zabidi

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia)

  • Ateekh Ur Rehman

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia
    Raytheon Chair for Systems Engineering (RCSE Chair), Advanced Manufacturing Institute, King Saud University, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia)

  • Mohammed Alkahtani

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia
    Raytheon Chair for Systems Engineering (RCSE Chair), Advanced Manufacturing Institute, King Saud University, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Ayoub Al-Zabidi & Ateekh Ur Rehman & Mohammed Alkahtani, 2021. "An Approach to Assess Sustainable Supply Chain Agility for a Manufacturing Organization," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-19, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:1752-:d:494627
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    Cited by:

    1. Salah Ahmed Mohamed Almoslehy & Mohammed Saad Alkahtani, 2021. "Key Approaches, Risks, and Product Performance in Managing the Development Process of Complex Products Sustainably," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-24, April.
    2. Chih-Hung Hsu & Ru-Yue Yu & An-Yuan Chang & Wan-Ling Liu & An-Ching Sun, 2022. "Applying Integrated QFD-MCDM Approach to Strengthen Supply Chain Agility for Mitigating Sustainable Risks," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-41, February.
    3. Erdinç Koç & Muhammet Burak Delibaş & Yaprak Anadol, 2022. "Environmental Uncertainties and Competitive Advantage: A Sequential Mediation Model of Supply Chain Integration and Supply Chain Agility," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-18, July.
    4. Roy Setiawan & Rabia Salman & Bari Galimovich Khairov & Valeriy Vasilyevich Karpov & Svetlana Dmitrievna Danshina & Lidia Vladimirovna Vasyutkina & Natalia Alekseevna Prodanova & Viacheslav Zhenzhebir, 2021. "Sustainable Closed-Loop Mask Supply Chain Network Design Using Mathematical Modeling and a Fuzzy Multi-Objective Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-12, May.
    5. Jun-Der Leu & Larry Jung-Hsing Lee & Yi-Wei Huang & Chia-Chi Huang, 2021. "Sustainable Supply Chains: Evidence from Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-22, August.
    6. Hamed Nozari & Agnieszka Szmelter-Jarosz & Javid Ghahremani-Nahr, 2021. "The Ideas of Sustainable and Green Marketing Based on the Internet of Everything—The Case of the Dairy Industry," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-18, October.
    7. Mohammed Saeed Al-Alqam & Ateekh Ur Rehman & Marwan Alsultan, 2023. "Sustainability Indexing Model for Saudi Manufacturing Organizations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-25, January.

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