The combination of lean and agile supply chain strategies has been coined “legality”.
The leagile de-coupling point model described by Mason-Jones et al. (2000) and
Christopher and Towill (2001) aims at holding inventory in some generic or modular
form (lean strategy) and only complete the final assembly or configuration when the
precise customer requirement is known (agile strategy). These authors emphasize that
managers need to understand how market conditions and the wider operating
environment will demand not a single off-the-shelf solution, but hybrid strategies
which are context specific. The case findings point us to extend this de-coupling
model to an approach where a reactive, agile customer-related strategy is de-coupled
from a proactive, robust supplier-related strategy. This finding elaborates on
existing strategy-selection models by Fisher (1997) and Lee (2002) by helping
managers to select the appropriate supply chain strategy with respect to risk-based
context factors.