Lean, agile or leagile? Matching your supply chain to the marketplace

Many enterprises have pursued the lean thinking paradigm to improve the efficiency of their business processes. More recently, the agile manufacturing paradigm has been highlighted as an alternative to, and possibly an improvement on, leanness. In pursuing such arguments in isolation, the power of each paradigm may be lost, which is basically that agile manufacturing is adopted where demand is volatile, and lean manufacturing adopted where there is a stable demand. However, in some situations it is advisable to utilize a different paradigm on either side of the material flow de-coupling point to enable a total supply chain strategy. This approach we have termed the Leagile Paradigm. This paper therefore considers the effect of the marketplace environment on strategy selection to ensure optimal supply chain performance. Real-world case studies in the mechanical precision products, carpet making, and electronic products market sectors demonstrate the new approach to matching supply chain design to the actual needs of the marketplace.