An empirical investigation and prioritization of barriers toward implementation of agile manufacturing in the manufacturing industry

Purpose: The study aims at empirically investigating and prioritizing the critical barriers for the successful implementation of agile manufacturing in the medium- and large-scale Indian manufacturing industries. Design/methodology/approach: A literature review of peer-reviewed journals and discussion with experts is used to identify 17 barriers to the implementation of agile manufacturing. An empirical survey is then conducted to collect data regarding the agile manufacturing barriers and is further analyzed using the factor analysis and vlsekriterijumska optimizacija i kompromisno resenje (VIKOR). Findings: Based on the survey of empirical data, the investigated critical barriers were reduced in five critical categories, as follows: Managerial constraints, technological constraints, human resource–related constraints, operational constraints and organizational culture-related constraints, which are further ranked in terms of their severity using VIKOR. This research advocates the development of a strategy for addressing the most critical barriers instead of focusing on all for the successful implementation of agile manufacturing. Originality/value: This work contributes to agile manufacturing literature by the structured presentation of the barriers to implement agile manufacturing in the Indian manufacturing industry. It also extends the integrated factor analysis and VIKOR method to investigate and rank the barriers.