Agile manufacturing (AM) is the result of manufacturing strategy evolution in the manufacturing industry, which continues to develop and respond to the challenges of rapid global market changes. The manufacturing industry sectors in many countries, such as the chemical industry, pump manufacturing, steel industry, electronics industry, and automotive industry, have implemented agile manufacturing and positively impacted operational and business performance. Nevertheless, the shipbuilding industry, which differs from a typical manufacturing industry with specific characteristics such as market volatility, customized job orders, and customer-driven, has partially implemented the AM concept at the functional level. However, increasing the company's performance depends on its ability to find and manage the vital factors of agile manufacturing. Therefore, 13 related scientific articles were reviewed in this study, and their proposed factors were comparatively analyzed. The result shows that numbers of vital factors have significant influences in creating an effective implementation of AM in the shipbuilding business. The vital factors of AM are classified into seven groups: technologies, organizational culture, empowerment, manufacturing system, supplier relationship, customer focus, and core competence. These vital factors are considered appropriate for developing an agile manufacturing model in the shipbuilding industry, including the correlation of the vital factors to the operational performance, which is a challenge for further research.