Agile manufacturing and information system design - a Taiwan case

Agile manufacturing (AM) has been advocated as the 21st century's manufacturing paradigm, and is seen as the winning strategy to become international leaders in an ever increasing competitive market of fast changing customer requirements. This paper attempts to address the key question of how to logically link the AM strategies and manufacturing information system (MIS) requirements. A framework is provided that uses relationship matrixes to logically integrate the manufacturing information system design with agility strategies. It provides a structured procedure for identifying the agile drivers in the business environment, whereby deploying agility capabilities needed to finally determine the MIS requirements that will support or enhance manufacturing agility. This paper also describes how the proposed approach has been applied to develop information systems for AM in a Taiwan company. Through the analysis of the company's manufacturing strategic requirements, it revealed that the proposed procedures can help to enhance manufacturing agility, as well as ensure a competitive edge.