An ISM-ANP approach to identifying key agile factors in launching a new product into mass production

In order to gain a competitive advantage in the globalised environment, a company has to operate with a high level of agility in terms of responding quickly and flexibly to changes in competitive criteria, the market, and customer demands. Agility has become an important strategic factor in competition. When the design stage of an original equipment manufacturer (OEM)'s or original design manufacturer (ODM)'s product is completed, and it starts to enter the mass production stage, a number of uncertain factors are often encountered, which may delay the manufacturing process and lead to lost business opportunities. Focusing on this issue, the present research establishes a hybrid approach to discovering the critical agility factors when launching a new product into mass production. In this research, interpretive structure modelling (ISM) is first utilised to identify the interactive causal relationships of the employed agility factors. Further, an analytical network process (ANP) model is applied to obtain the importance weights of the agility criteria based on the dependence or feedback relationships among the factors obtained from the results of ISM. As a result, both a visualised causal relationship and a quantified representation of the critical agility criteria can be provided to aid managers in effective decision-making.