Agility is a major concern for enterprises across manufacturing and service sectors. This paper supports the claim that process-oriented approaches are useful for agility improvement projects. It builds on an existing process-oriented framework for agility improvement projects to identify agility enabling principles and tools in manufacturing. Collectively, the framework processes, enabling principles and tools contribute the operationalization of agility improvement initiatives. Surveyed practitioners’ confirm this general finding as well as the relevance of the framework to middle management, in particular in Small-and-Medium Sized enterprises.