Article Review and CritiqueAGILE MANUFACTURING IN PRACTICE: APPLICATION OF A METHODOLOGYBy H. Sharifi and Z. Zhang

The article by Sharifi and Zhang is outlining a developed methodology for achieving agility in manufacturing organization and describing its implementation and validation in two case study companies. In developing the methodology, the authors used two empirical studies: the concept of agility (Dove, 1996; Kidd, 1995), and the conceptual model of agility (Zhang and Sharifi, 2000) as their main references.
Basically there are three major stages composed in the methodology: the determination of a company’s agility needs and it current agility level, the determination of agility capabilities required in order for the company to become agile, and the identification of agility providers or business practices and tools which could lead to the recognized capabilities for the company. In order to give a better picture of the methodology, the authors created a graphical form of the methodology in figure 2 of the article.
In the first stage of the methodology, an assessment model is develop...