About the only thing we know about forecasts is that they are virtually always wrong, often drastically. This being the case, the ability to quickly react to short term changes in supply and demand, an advanced degree of agility would be a pretty useful weapon in the survival kit.

Consider the agility in your business, and do not get it mixed up with flexibility, which is the ability to adapt your business to accommodate the longer term structural changes in the competitive environment.

Many of the “lean” tools are designed to assist the agility of a business, as they enable agile response to changes in short term demand.