Developing a practical evaluation framework for identifying critical factors to achieve supply chain agility

• We develop a framework to evaluate factors that contribute to supply chain agility.
• A hybrid evaluation method that combines fuzzy logic, DEMATEL and ANP is applied.
• We analyze the inter-relationships between the main agile-enabling factors.
• The proposed framework is applied to a case study of an automotive company.

Supply chain agility is a key determinant of competitiveness in today’s dynamic and turbulent business environment. This paper develops a practical evaluation framework that serves to identify critical factors for achieving supply chain agility. First, we construct a reference framework of the factors that contribute to achieving agility in supply chain based on a systematic analysis of the related literature. Then, we develop a hybrid evaluation method that integrates fuzzy logic, DEMATEL (decision making trial and evaluation laboratory), and ANP (analytic network process). The proposed framework is implemented in an automotive company that is seeking to improve agility of its supply chain. It provides a systematic approach to explore and analyze influential relationships between agile-enabling factors and assigns a weight to each factor representing its relative importance. It also captures ambiguities, uncertainties, and vagueness inherent in evaluating the factors and their relationships and provides an efficient mechanism for group evaluation.