Modern Manufacturing Practices and Agile Enterprise. Anticipated Scope of Implementation and Empirical Results from Polish Enterprises

Abstract

This paper focuses on an organizational structure aspects in agile enterprises with the aim of summarizing the actual research issue both: theoretical postulates and their empirical verification. The theoretical model of the own research is based on S. Trzcielinski model of agile enterprise that describes an agile enterprise in four dimensions: 1. Shrewdness of the enterprise, which is a function assigning to the turbulent environment a string of potential market opportunities 2. Resource flexibility of the enterprise transforms the string of potential opportunities into a string of resource available opportunities. 3. Enterprise's intelligence is an ability to understand situations and find deliberate reactions to them, that is to activate proper resource to weaken the threats or use the opportunities. 4. Smartness of the enterprise is an ability to quickly use the opportunities in a benefit brining manner. These agile dimensions are interpreted from the situational conditions of an enterprise: internal and external factors. The internal factors are: market orientation, product/ service customization, key process creating market advantage, business goals, and organizational goals. The external factors are levels of branch stability. The theoretical model of anticipated scope of implementation of modern production practices has been verified in two of larger empirical research projects undertaken at the Faculty of Engineering Management of Poznan University of Technology. The first project from 2012, called “Adjustment of enterprises’ management systems to knowledge-based economy”, and the second one from 2014, called “Determinants of implementing modern methods and technics of management in Polish enterprises”. The both empirical research surveyed 150 of enterprises represented Polish economy. There are four parts of the paper: 1. Introduction; 2. The characteristics and model of an agile enterprise; 3. The empirical results from the own researches; 4. Conclusions.