In contemporary manufacturing area, agility is considerably acknowledged as an emerging issue to react to dynamic market environment changes. The implementation of agile manufacturing system proved to be efficient to acquire a competitive advantage. Since the agile manufacturing (AM) concept was popularised in 1991, there is a growing recognition by practitioners and academics. The aim of this study is to perform an analysis of AM research in order to update the literature review, give the current discussion regarding the trends and note the suggestions for the future directions of AM research. In this paper, we provide a wide coverage of excessively citations on AM from 1991 to 2015. The papers are classified in AM conceptual frameworks, agility assessment, agility achievement, merging lean and agile concepts, and adopting AM on small- and medium-sized enterprises. Furthermore, a category scheme to organise the journals is proposed and equipped by summary statistics presentation. The study results of the literature review are expected to assist development in the AM research.