David M.

Gligor the author of the paper tried to link the demand management with supply chain
agility (SCA). For this the author conducted a multi-disciplinary research with systematic literate
reviews so that he could formulate a conceptual framework. In his research he found that most of
the previous theory interpreted SCA as a flexibility in supply management or operation
management, but the author found that for achieving SCA organization need not only flexibility
in supply management or operation management but also in demand management as well. After
reading the whole paper the topic of supply chain agility is clear to me because the author David
M. Gligor tried his best to relate all the previous theories and literatures to explore the structure
and process for developing SCA and how SCA helps decision making processes. The author was
fully focused on the topic, for doing that he refined a total of 242 articles as well as gave the full
description about agility and agility related framework with their limitation example: Chirstopher
agile supply chain framework, Swafford framework for supply chain etc. I will discuss those
framework later. But David M. Gligor historical and background analysis, informative facts with
proper explanation made the paper interesting which can attract reader attention for an example:
the agility concept emerged in business in 1991. All his research topics and discussion helped a
reader to understand the topic of SCA the main subject area of this paper and his findings can be
used as a checklist to find out which area need to improve for better agility.

The author divided this paper research metrology in two main objective. First one is, the
structure and process of SCA and second one is, decision making processes under SCA. For that
he divided his literature review process in five stage so that he could give an optimal solution
and logical finding. The five stages are problem formulation, literature search, evaluation of
research, research analysis and interpretation, and presentation of results. To find out how much
strong, accurate, and logical his background analysis I also flow the same five stage review
process, for background analysis I am going to use first four stages. First I am starting with
problem finding stage, author finds out that most of the agility frameworks take the supply side
perspective (procurement flexibility, manufacturing flexibility, and distribution or logistics
flexibility) and assume that is fixed or known, but we know that demand is as volatile as supply
and supply demand matching also known as demand and supply instigation (DSI) is the key of
successful business, plus there is a gap or lack of perfect interpretation of agility. Therefore, the
author in his second stages he found or searched all the literature related to agility and supply
chain agility framework. Let’s look at his mentioned literature related to agility, he found 798
articles on agility and he gave the terms on agility as quickly response to sudden changes in
supply chain and demand, smooth and efficient handling of disruption, survival of unprecedented
threats of business environment, change as opportunity, flexibility, integration within and cross
function/processes, speed and customer empowerment customization. And agreed on the terms
because agility means quickly, but quickly for what as we discuss the supply chain agility we
have to consider the supply chain to define agility. In the volatile global and local market
companies need response quickly to sudden changes in supply and demand if they don’t they
will lose business and potential customers, there is a statement “When the rate of changes outside
an organization is faster than inside, the end in near”. And this statement is related to the other
terms what the author said. But supply chain agility flexibility and integration is must what we
see in Yusuf (1999) who give the definition of agility focusing on those factors which is also
mentioned in author paper, but the most used and cited definition given by Cristopher who also
give the first framework in agile supply chain in 2004. Next the author conducted evaluation of
research stage and searched the previous SCA framework for developing an optimized SCA
framework. Firstly, he started with theoretical foundations and it is important without any
theoretical knowledge it is hard to develop a framework. Here author mention SSP theoretical
framework but the whole theory is unclear and the author didn’t give a proper and
understandable explanation or graph or diagram so that we can easily catch the concept of SSP.
But he mentioned that SSP theory implemented in firm’s strategy, and for achieving SCA the
channel partners must be work together. Basically here author mixed the SCA framework with
collaborative and strategic relation with channel partner which is important, but for lack of SSP
explanation theoretical foundation is not as strong as other parts of the paper. Next he review the
frameworks here he talked about in total of five SCA frameworks with their limitation and how
to solve the limitation. The first framework that the author talked about was developed by
Harrision and Christopher in year 1999, in year 2001 Van Hoek also contributed and in 2004
Christopher gave the diagram of the framework. The framework consider market sensitivity,
virtual, network based and process integration as the characteristics of agile supply chain not
supply chain agility. The overall framework gave us an idea that how external and multi-firm
focus characteristics could developed SCA and the author also briefly explain that, author also
gives showed us the limitation which is true without flexibility we can’t established SCA based
on external and multi-firm focus. The next framework which was developed by Swafford in
2006. The framework fully focused on flexibility not the demand process which is a limitation.
And the author told use that without demand process SCA is impossible. Next framework
introduced by Jain in 2008, and this framework was the mixer of previous two framework. But
the limitation which was discussed by the author is true and logical because without discussing
the unit changes of those two framework how one should determine the changes of one factor of
other, and another limitation was it seem forced to fit in because there was no logical explanation
between characteristics and enablers of agility. The forth framework introduced by Li in 2008
which suggested three levels of agility and those were an episodic design level, operational
design level, and strategic design level. The author was not discuss that much but this framework
but it’s better for us if the author discussed more about this because level of operation can be
changed which is related to flexibility. The last framework was proposed by Gligor and
Holocomb which highlights the strategic roles of supply chain orientation in guiding the
development of SCA which is demand management, supply management and information
management interface capabilities but author didn’t discussed that much about this frameworks.
So we can say that the literature provide a sound background and justification because in the
paper author described what the actual meaning and important factors of agility with brief
discussion of reviewed frameworks with their limitation but if the author described last two
frameworks more it will be better for us. But the quality of sources and narration of the sources
is attractive and easy which can easily catch reader’s attention.

In the research analysis and interpretation stages the author analyzed all his background
information and finds some important factors which were the interpretation of his finding. In this
stage author firstly talked about process flexibility because flexibility of processes is the first
proposed key of agility. To prove that the author gave and discussed about many research
proposition (RP). Here he basically discussed the advantages of flexibility in supply and demand
management which was disused in author findings “For achieving SCA organization need not
only flexibility in supply management or operation management but also in demand management
as well.”. Next he analyzed and give interpretation for demand supply integration where he took
many theoretical support and gave us an important information about how knowledge
management could help the organization operations as well as demand supply integration (DSI)
which helped us to develop the SCA framework. And the DSI falls under shared interpretation
steps (Knowledge management involves four distinct steps: knowledge generation, knowledge
dissemination, shared interpretation and knowledge application) on knowledge management. The
last prat is the presentation of results or finding where the author gives the statement that:

“Based on the literature review and the theoretical and logical arguments presented thus far, it is
the premise of this paper that both organizational flexibility and integration of demand and
supply are needed to achieve SCA.”

To prove his statement or results he gave the argument “The higher the level of organizational
flexibility, the higher the level of SCA” & “The higher the level of DSI, the higher the level of
SCA.” Both of his argument is right and to the point, both arguments comes from theory and
logical based. For example: if a company have higher level of organizational flexibility it can
easily change the sudden changes to its opportunity and its flexibility gives them to response
quick in operational way which key terms of agility. Next if organization have demand supply
integration it can response quickly to supply or demand changes which is another term of agility.
Therefore, we can easily said that the author finding were clearly presented with proving
arguments and the findings were related to research area and they support all the evidence what
author provided.

In the conclusion, we can say that the author tried his best to provide us the SCA framework
which is optimized for doing this he developed SCA framework respected to operational
flexibility and integration of supply and demand which is more logically and theoretically right
because today’s business environment businesses need a flexible operations department who can
response quickly to sudden change with DSI for better supply demand matching strategies. And
the author mentioned that his framework created new research platform because for responding
quick we need to shorter the other department involvement like finance and marketing which is
not possible because this two department is more powerful department in a business. So we need
to establish a framework where all the departments works together for SCA though maintaining
operational flexibility and integration of supply and demand.