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Top1. Introduction And State Of Art
The Supply Chain Management (SCM) is an active management, which maximizes the customer values and achieves a sustainable competitive advantage. It represents a conscious effort by the supply chain firms to develop and run supply chains in the most effective and efficient ways. Supply chain activities cover everything from product development, sourcing, production and logistics as well as the information systems needed to coordinate these activities (Source: http://scm.ncsu.edu/scm-articles/article/what-is-supply-chain-management). Recently, many businesses have adopted the concept of agile supply chains or networks in order to respond efficiently and effectively to increasingly dynamic and volatile markets (Christopher, 2000). The importance of time has been recognized as a competitive weapon for some time, which highlighted and enhanced the value of agile SC concept (Stalk, 1988). Agility is defined as the ability of an enterprise to rapidly respond to change in market and customers’ demands (Markland, Vickery & Davis, 1995). It is defined as an ability of enterprise to meet the demands of customers for ever-shorter delivery times (Stalk, & Thomas, 1990; Sharp, Irani & Desai, 1999). It is defined by the agility index, which is a combination of measured intensity levels of agility enable-attributes excluding other measuring methods (Yusuf, Ren & Burns, 2001; Youssuf, 1993). The agility has four underlying fragments associated with the value towards the customers, being ready for change, valuing human knowledge and skills, and forming virtual partnership (Goldman, Nagel & Dove 1991). Dempsey (1978), identified twenty different supplier attributes in his analysis into the decision-making process, his approach is excessively complex and consequently poses problems in application. Yigin, Taskin, Cedimoglu, and Topal (2007), explained that agile supply chain management can be considered as one of the most important aspects of production planning and control. Agile supply chain provides the link from suppliers to customers in the planning, manufacturing and controlling of raw materials and products (Markland, Vickery & Davis, 1995).