Bibliometric Analysis of Lean, Agile, and Leagile Supply Chains in Automobile Industry (1990 - 2017)

This article describes how organizations embrace various supply chain strategies aiming at effective and efficient performance outcomes for gaining competitive advantage. The authors conducted an extensive search for academic publications on lean, agile, and leagile (hybrid) supply chains in context with automobile industries, published since year 1990 in reliable repositories such as Google Scholar, Scopus and ResearchGate. None of these papers used bibliometric analysis on the topic. This paper systematically maps, publications on lean, agile, and legal strategies in automobile industry published during 1990–2017. A five-step process is followed, namely (i) defining appropriate search terms, (ii) initial search results, (iii) refinement of search results, (iv) initial data, statistics, and (v) data analysis; adopted for inclusion of relevant documents for publication and citation analysis. Selected documents include primary search term ‘automobile' along with associated secondary terms such as ‘lean', ‘agile', ‘lean and agile', and ‘leagile' as part of the title, abstract, or keywords. The analysis finds several documents on lean or agile strategies, but only one document exists on ‘leagile' paradigm. Maximum articles are contributed on engineering subjects followed by business, management and accounting and computer sciences. Large publication and high citation counts were observed for lean from United States and Chinese authors, whereas Indian authors contributed in agile studies. This article identifies areas of current research interests discussing crucial contributions by several authors' and provides potential directions for further research investigations in the field.