Selecting manufacturing partners in the new emerging world of agile manufacturing is an endeavor that is beset with the complexity and dynamics of the market, driven by customer needs, as well as the inherent subjectivity of the selection process. This problem consists of determining an optimal group of manufacturing companies that collectively respond to a specific business initiative as a virtual enterprise. Considering these requirements, traditional vendor selection methodologies do not lend themselves readily applicable to the agile environment. This paper develops a flexible optimization framework for optimal manufacturing partner selection in such an environment. The framework: (1) employs a Fuzzy-AHP approach to compute attribute preferences, (2) acquires linguistically, needs of the specific business initiative, and systematically modifies attribute preferences, (3) performs a search among alternative manufacturing companies to identify and rank a small number of eff...

this paper, we review a wide range of recent literature on agile manufacturing. About 73 papers from premier scienti c journals and conferences have been reviewed, and a classication scheme to organize these is proposed. We critique these bodies of work and suggest directions for additional research and identify topics where fruitful opportunities exist. 1.