استراتژی تولید و رقابت

The importance of manufacturing strategy (MS) has never been questioned and has been emphasized in many theoretical concepts, frameworks, and models. There are only a few empirical studies, however, which examine whether these theories work in practice. In this paper the hypothesis that the existence of MS contributes to company level competitiveness (ROS, inventory turnover) is tested. The study is based on international data, which were collected in the second round of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey. The database contains more than 700 companies from the machinery industry (ISIC 381–385), from 23 countries. The results partially support the hypothesis. The existence of MS seems to have a positive effect on ROS, however, it does not have any relation to inventory turnover.

Is there a connection between production competence and business competitiveness? The majority of respondents would give a positive answer like in Schroeder et al. (1986), 80% of production managers answered this question affirmatively. Intuitively, it seems obvious that a smoothly running production system will have a positive influence on business performance. In the literature of production strategy—at the level of theories and concepts—it is discussed by several authors, like for the advantages and positive effects of production focus see the work of Skinner 1969 and Skinner 1974, for positioning production systems in product-process matrix and the strategic roles of manufacturing see Hayes and Wheelwright 1979a and Hayes and Wheelwright 1979b, Wheelwright and Hayes (1985), and for order winning criteria see Hill (1993). The statement seems to be logical since every new concept or method can prove that its existence—directly or indirectly—contributes to the business performance. The scientific and business world, however, are not satisfied by pure theoretical constructs. They require empirical support, such as case studies or other empirical procedures.

The existence of MS contributes positively to company performance, measured as ROS, on the basis of the statistical analyses on IMSS II data. This supports the results of Tunälv (1992) who analysed the same question (although on the MFS database) and found the same result. On the other hand, manufacturing strategy does not seem to effect inventory turnover. Intuitively, other factors like industry or company size are more important affecting factors here. Results in this paper also show that the existence of manufacturing strategy usually implies heavy involvement of production managers in the decision making process, or at least manufacturing at this level (with existing MS) should somehow channel important information towards business strategy. Finally, the strategic view, at the level of manufacturing, results in more attention towards quality, product development, and time factor issues, and less direct attention to costs. Inventory turnover is also more important to companies with MS, although there is practically no difference in the use of this measure. Looking beyond the rationale of these results, the behaviour of companies having MS is in accordance with the suggestions of the sand cone model (Ferdows and de Meyer, 1990). One can argue that these results may be industry specific. In some sense this argument is true, since we had a limited number of industries. However, according to Boone and Whybark 1995a and Boone and Whybark 1995b, who analysed differences between two very different industries (small machine tool and textile industries) using an international database, differences in manufacturing practices between countries are much greater than those between industries, which is due to the special economic, legal, and cultural environment in various countries.