An empirical exploration of Agile manufacturing for enhanced business performance in Indian manufacturing industry

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of agile manufacturing practices on business performance of Indian medium and large-scale manufacturing industry. Design/methodology/approach A survey questionnaire was designed to attain the research objectives. Agile manufacturing questionnaire was sent to around 500 randomly selected manufacturing organizations in the northern spectrum of India through e-mails and posts, out of which 154 usable responses have been received. This study investigates the inter-relationships between various agile manufacturing implementation practices and business performance measures using various statistical techniques. This paper deploys Games–Howell hoc test to establish the statistical significance of business performance improvements, progressively accrued over a reasonable period of time, through holistic agile manufacturing implementation. Findings The paper validates the contribution of agile manufacturing toward realization of the significant improvements in various business performance measures such as customer-related achievements, financial achievements, business-related achievements, operational achievements, employee-related achievements, and supplier-related achievements. Further, the discriminant validity test has been used in this paper for classifying highly successful and moderately successful organizations. Research limitations/implications The paper only concentrated on manufacturing organizations in northern India. The results of this paper cannot generalize across all the sectors and spectrum of Indian manufacturing organizations. Originality/value This paper develops an insight into the strong potential of agile manufacturing implementation practices in affecting business performance measures.