Agility evaluation using fuzzy logic

Change seems to be one of enterprises' major characteristics in this new competitive era. Agile enterprise whereby an organization can change and adapt quickly to changing circumstances is increasingly viewed as a winning strategy. However, in embracing agile enterprise, there are important questions to be asked: what precisely is agility and how can it be measured? How can one assist in achieving and enhancing agility effectively? Answers to such questions are critical to the practitioners and to the theory of agile enterprise design. The foundation of agile enterprise lies in the integration of information system/technologies, people, business processes and facilities. Due to the ill-defined and vague indicators which exist within agility assessment, most measures are described Subjectively by linguistic terms which are characterized by ambiguity and multi-possibility, and the conventional assessment approaches cannot suitably nor effectively handle such measurement. However, fuzzy logic provides a useful tool for dealing with decisions in which the phenomena are imprecise and vague. Thus, the novelty in the paper is development of the absolute agility index, a unique and unprecedented attempt in agility measurement, using fuzzy logic to address the ambiguity in agility evaluation. Details of the approach and a framework of a fuzzy agility evaluation will be presented. An example is also used to illustrate the approach developed. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.