Measuring supply chain agility in the virtual organization

The need for increased flexibility in responding to market demand is driving a heightened interest in virtual, or agile organizations. However, agile response in the supply chain may not always be necessary and may not always be a better alternative than more traditional organizational structures. The model proposed in this paper provides a means of measuring both the need for agility and how agile an organization actually is. This is accomplished through the use of a hierarchical model that details with increasing specificity sources and levels of variance in the supply chain. As the ability to control specified variances increase, the need for agility decreases.