AGILE STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS IN THE AUTOMOTIVE MANUFACTURING LANDSCAPE

Abstract

In today's highly competitive business environment, organizations are continuously striving to identify the drivers and principles that create a sustainable competitive advantage. This study focuses on the adoption of Agile principles as a means to achieve this advantage. Agile has gained significant attention due to its ability to enhance efficiency in time-to-market, align with customer demands, and increase team productivity. By adopting Agile, organizations are more likely to achieve their business objectives, as demonstrated by previous research. The Agile approach offers a wide range of benefits in product development, including fostering ongoing collaboration among stakeholders and embracing change, thereby increasing the likelihood of meeting customer needs. Additionally, Agile methodologies help organizations eliminate waste in product development by prioritizing critical requirements, resulting in cost and time reduction. An Agile supply chain exhibits characteristics such as rapid response to volume and variety changes, reduced lead times, and replenishment times to meet the demands of customers. This aligns with Christopher's viewpoint on the Agile supply chain, as cited in Basu and Wright's work. Furthermore, the Agile approach extends its benefits to process improvement by enhancing collaboration between teams and stakeholders and emphasizing process deployment over extensive documentation, as highlighted by Linders. This study aims to explore the impacts and effectiveness of Agile principles in various aspects of business operations, including product development, supply chain management, and process improvement. By conducting a comprehensive analysis of existing literature and empirical data, this research will provide valuable insights into the adoption and implementation of Agile methodologies in organizations. The findings will contribute to a deeper understanding of how agile practices can be leveraged to enhance competitiveness, improve operational efficiency, and drive organizational success.