Disentangling leanness and agility: An empirical investigation

Abstract

Manufacturing plant managers have sought performance improvements by adhering to the guiding principles of leanness and agility. Lean manufacturing and agile manufacturing paradigms have also received considerable attention in operations management literature. However, paradoxically, the extant literature is lacking in clarity and fails to delineate with sufficient precision how and why leanness and agility differ. Given the resource constraints within which most manufacturing firms have to operate today, it is useful, if not critical, to develop a good understanding of how these paradigms differ and what their constituent dimensions are. Such an understanding is also essential for developing and testing theories relating to leanness and agility. Through a literature review we discuss leanness and agility in two ways: (1) as manufacturing paradigms and (2) as performance capabilities. Our empirical study attempts to determine whether lean and agile forms occur with any degree of regularity in manufacturing plants. The results confirm the existence of homogeneous groups that resemble lean and agile performing plants, and they identify important differences pertaining to their constituent performance dimensions. The results indicate that while the pursuit of agility might presume leanness, pursuit of leanness might not presume agility. While the performance capability differences across the empirically derived groups accord well with expected differences across plants that excel in leanness and agility, the practice differences across the groups are not as clearly distinguished. We discuss the implications of our findings for further research and theory development.