Critical factors for achieving supply chain agility: Towards a comprehensive taxonomy

Supply chain agility is now widely recognised as a key determinant of competitiveness and survival in today's dynamic and turbulent business environment. However, the problem of achieving agility in supply chain is still largely unresolved. This paper aims to contribute towards the development of a comprehensive taxonomy of the factors that are critical to have a truly agile supply chain. A substantial body of research literature is analysed using a systematic, inductive approach based on grounded theory (GT) to identify the critical factors. Overall, 12 categories of critical factors for achieving supply chain agility are developed and validated through a quantitative survey of supply chain experts from the automotive industry. A ranking of the factors is also established based on their relative criticality. From the findings, an integrative framework is proposed as a reference for the development of supply chain agility.