What makes a Supply chain, Agile?

1. Market Sensitive. By market sensitive we mean that the supply chain is capable of reading and responding to real demand. Most organisations are forecast-driven rather than demand-driven.
 
2. Mastered Virtual supply chain. The use of information technology to share data between buyers and suppliers is, in effect, creating an information based rather than inventory based supply chain. Earlier complex formulae and algorithms existed to support inventory-based business model. Paradoxically, what we are now learning is that once we have visibility of demand through shared information, the premise upon which these formulae are based no longer holds.
 
3. Process integration to capitalise on Shared information. By process integration we mean collaborative working between buyers and suppliers, joint product development, common systems and shared information. Along with process integration comes joint strategy determination, buyer-supplier teams, transparency of information and even open-book accounting.
 
4. Network of partners . The route to sustainable advantage lies in being able to leverage the respective strengths and competencies of network partners to achieve greater responsiveness to market needs.