The term originally comes from software development. In the 1990s, new forms of project work became established in response to increasingly complex programs. Long planning phases and hierarchical structures gave way to short decision-making processes and iterative, incremental improvement loops. Agile working and management methods have now found their way into many industries - at least as a guiding principle and vision.
In this respect, it is not surprising that the greece whatsapp data term also appears in the " Industry 4.0 Maturity Index " of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech). The study is a strategic guide that is intended to help industrial companies successfully master the digital transformation . acatech published it last year. A summary can be found here.
How important the term is to the authors - a pool of more than 50 scientists and company representatives - is already clear in the foreword. "The overarching goal is the learning, agile company that can continuously adapt to a changing environment," writes former acatech President Henning Kagermann, who has had a major influence on German industrial policy for years. It is later stated that agility is "the key skill for companies in Industry 4.0" and a "strategic success factor."
So what is agility? According to the acatech study, it means the ability to
to be able to make changes in the company". This can mean small adjustments to the production process or fundamental changes such as those to the business model. The speed of the changes is important. To illustrate how such processes can be accelerated, the authors work with a model. Before an event - be it the failure of a system or customer requests for a product - is followed by a corresponding measure , a company goes through several intermediate steps. It collects data about the event, analyses it, initiates (counter)measures and ensures that they are effective. Between each of these steps there are "latencies", colloquially known as delay times. If a company wants to work on its own agility, it must shorten these latencies.