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should be replaced by management of interactions inside or outside of a managed unit
and should be built on leading, sharing information and delegation of competencies.
The new competitive advantage in the current business environment from
a combination of supply chain management and lean principles has not been exhausted
so far. The main reason is that the new lean tools have been implemented in the old
mass production environment. A different business environment, market conditions,
competencies of competitors and the new demand of customers should be followed not
only by new technologies and tools but also by the radical changes in the understanding
of productivity, added value, cost evaluation and management of supply chains.
1.4 Agile supply chain management
In the last decades, agility has been one of the key concepts discussed by many
authors. Christopher defines agility as an ability of an organisation to respond rapidly
to changes in demand both in terms of volume and variety [10]. Sheffi emphasises
the unpredictability of changes, and agility is the ability to respond to unanticipated
changes [51]. Sharifi and Zhang focus their attention not only on the changes in
demand (market), but on all the changes in the business environment – agility is
the ability to cope with unexpected changes, to survive unprecedented threats of the
business environment, and to take advantage of changes as opportunities [49]. Charles
et al. point out the short-term character of the changes, and they distinguish between
agility and adaptability – while agility is being able to deal with and take advantage of
uncertainty and volatility, adaptability is rather used for more profound medium-term
changes [7]. Finally, Chinnaiah and Kamarthi remind us that virtually anything can be
changed if cost is not a constraint, but change at any cost is not a viable solution [8].
That is why the supply chain agility can be defined as the ability of the supply chain
to react very quickly, but at an acceptable cost, to short-term, unexpected and significant
changes in the business environment in order to satisfy customer requirements.
There are many changes that may occur in the business environment. They occur
with constantly increasing speed, unpredictability and the rate of impact on the supply
chain. The main areas where changes occur are:
• Customers – changes in their requirements, stability of demand.
• Competition – not only the existing but also potential and substitution.
• Suppliers – instability of supplies, financial problems of the suppliers.
• Politics and law – changes in legislation, way of market protection and
support of business in each country.
• Economics – changes in macroeconomic development of countries.
• Society – changes in habits and preferences of inhabitants, social problems.
• Technology – development of new technologies, short product life cycles.
Generally, the changes can be divided into two groups – the changes in the
competitive environment (especially customers, suppliers, competitors) and the changes in
the general environment (politics, economics, society and technologies). The classification
of the changes under consideration is shown in Figure 1.8.