Smart Supply Chain for Agile Implementation in the Manufacturing Industry

This paper attempts to study the implementation of agile methods in a manufacturing industry and provides the best recommendation for improvement of efficiencies and optimization of costs, without compromising on quality and schedules. This study has been carried out in a real-time environment with actual data from the manufacturing unit and also several interviews with the vendors involved in supplying components and sub-assemblies. An attempt has been made to promote mutual trust and engage vendors as partners in business and bring in more transparency in everyday transactions. The study carried out resulted in adopting the agile supply chain for a select set of components which had well established vendors and had a high rate of acceptance. The idea was to run this as a pilot program and then extend this to the entire set of components and assemblies required for a weekly production schedule. In view of the very high daily production rates, the idea was to facilitate transformation with a very low element of risk. This pilot is likely to run for at least three months before the second wave of change sets in