Availability and reliability of resources in an agile manufacturing systems

Agility is strategy that allows to cope successfully with dynamics and complexity of contemporary market and to respond to global customers' needs and requirements efficiently and economically. It is based on the idea that a company should respond to customers' needs providing them with products fitting their specific requirements. One of the most important and difficult decisions connected with agile strategy is definition of resources necessary to run various processes and if necessary develop products from the very beginning. After the resources are defined it is necessary to provide their availability and reliability. The aim of the paper is to identify strategy for technical resources management. Agile approach is discussed in literature, and importance of human factor is stressed, while technical aspects are presented usually in a general way. The research starts with development of methodology for identification of structure of technical resources and their status (own/shared). Reliability and availability (the scope of the conference) of resources seems to be crucial for ability to run customer-driven processes efficiently. The expert system is to be designed for resources definition, and based on that reliability-providing strategy is to be suggested.