Designing and Validating the Agility Model of the Supply Chain of the Country's Mining Industry

The purpose of this study is to identify and explain the main factors measuring agility in the mining industry as the most important non-oil industry in the country. This research is an applied research in terms of purpose and a combined research in terms of method. The statistical population of the research in the qualitative and quantitative sections includes the experts, intellectuals and scholars of the country's mining industry. The methods of data collection are questionnaires and surveys. In the qualitative section, first, through finding related research articles by the meta-combination method, 124 sources are selected and 16 criteria for measuring agility are identified. These include communications (information technology), customer orientation, coordinated planning, staff skills development, process integration, customer satisfaction, flexibility, product quality, cost reduction, market sensitivity and responsiveness, innovation, new product launches, delivery speed, technology changes, training and learning and trust. With a survey of 20 experts in the country's mining industry by the fuzzy Delphi method, 8 main factors are extracted, validated and screened from the listed criteria, namely, the product quality, market responsiveness, delivery speed, flexibility, reduction costs, innovation, customer orientation, communications and information technology. These indicators are then evaluated and prioritized by the DANP method and the identified factors are classified into four levels and two dependent/independent groups using the interpretive structural modeling and micro-analysis. The findings show that customer orientation is an essential element of supply chain agility that reduces the costs and increases the innovation. Cost reduction and improved innovation in turn, affect flexibility, product quality and communications. Furthermore, flexibility, product quality and communications factors affect the responsiveness and the speed of delivery. Finally, the delivery speed and the market responsiveness lead to the desired supply chain agility.