روابط بین دو رویکرد برای برنامه ریزی استراتژی تولید : یک رویکرد استراتژیک و رویکرد پارادایمی

Two approaches for planning manufacturing strategy, a strategic approach and a paradigmatic approach, are introduced. The key decisions of these two approaches are, respectively, located in the choices of competitive priorities and manufacturing paradigms. Three hypothesis models on the relationships between these two approaches in a turbulent environment are founded with the help of structural equation modeling and tested with 107 samples from the Chinese manufacturing industry. The results suggest that when established the relationships between manufacturing strategy and business strategy, the mediate function of competitive priorities is not suitable for manufacturing paradigms, and it is more appropriate to make the key decisions in each approach based on business strategy directly.

Manufacturing strategy has different paradigms, such as competing through manufacturing, strategic choices in manufacturing and best practices (Voss, 1995). Accordingly, there are different approaches for planning manufacturing strategy. Two approaches are introduced in this paper: a strategic approach and a paradigmatic approach. In the strategic approach, the key decisions on manufacturing strategy are located in the choices of competitive priorities, which are known as the manufacturer's choice of emphases from among key capabilities such as quality, cost, delivery and flexibility. In the paradigmatic approach, the key decisions on manufacturing strategy are located in the choices of manufacturing paradigms which include best practices and innovative manufacturing systems, such as lean production and agile manufacturing. A compatible and complementary relationship can be found between these two approaches, and there are close relationships between the choices on competitive priorities and manufacturing paradigms. However, there exist different views on planning manufacturing strategy according to these two approaches. One issue in this regard is whether the decisions on manufacturing paradigms should be made based on competitive priorities, business strategy or both. As a decision in the manufacturing section, manufacturing paradigms should be consistent with manufacturing strategy, such as the decisions on competitive priorities. On the other hand, as a paradigm of manufacturing strategy, manufacturing paradigms should be directed by business strategy. Different choices will have different planning process models for manufacturing strategy and different performance in practice, too. Since manufacturing strategy must support business strategy irrespective of the approach used, we suggest that the relationships between the two approaches be examined through an analysis of the relationships among the key decisions of the two approaches and business strategy. Research on the relationships between manufacturing paradigms, competitive priorities and business strategy can be also helpful for introducing and improving innovative manufacturing systems or best practices. In this paper, 31 such innovative manufacturing systems are collected. In addition, an increasing number of such systems and tools are entering the market, covering the whole supply chain, such as SCM packages provided by SAP, Manugistics and i2. However, it is reported that many firms have failed in the innovative activities. It has been widely accepted that in the absence of good integration with strategy, these innovative activities would not lead to good performance. Usually, manufacturing strategy is a suitable choice for most firms to build the integration. One reason for this is that these innovative activities are purposed to the production sections or the SCM. The other reason is that manufacturing strategy can mediate between business strategy and business performance (Ward and Duray, 2000). Another choice is to set up a direct linkage with business strategy but not with manufacturing strategy. The difference is that the second selection does not agree with the mediatory role of manufacturing strategy, such as in terms of competitive priorities, between manufacturing paradigms and business strategy. In general, the consistency between manufacturing strategy and business strategy has been taken for granted, and the difference has not laid sufficient emphasis on both theory and practice. In academic research, when setting up the relationships between systems and strategy, different researchers employ different selections, business strategies or manufacturing strategies (Miltenburg, 1995; Duda and Cochran, 2000; Kim and Lee, 1993; Carrie et al., 1994). Relationships between manufacturing strategy and business strategy have been studied from the 1960s; however, the links need to be further researched because environmental and other changes have caused manufacturing strategy to drift away from the mainstream strategy (Brown and Blackmon, 2005; Barnes et al., 2004; Skinner, 1969). In practice, according to a survey on the Chinese manufacturing industry in 2000, the implementation of JIT may be beneficial for quality, inventory turnover and flexibility; however, it may also have a significant negative relationship with the market share improvement in China (Robb and Xie, 2001). Based on the response to the implementation of TQM in China in 2003, there is a lack of complete understanding of strategic quality management in the surveyed firms, and they only have superficial knowledge of the connotations of some quality dimensions (Lau et al., 2004). The purpose of this study is to compare different linkages between manufacturing paradigms, competitive priorities and business strategy through an empirical study, and provide suggestions on planning manufacturing strategy based on these two approaches. Questions on the relationships among manufacturing paradigms, competitive priorities and business strategy also reflect the coordination problems between two views on strategic management: the market-led view and the resource-based view. In the market-led view, changes within markets determine the market position and functional-level strategy; in the resource-based view, the firm should assemble and deploy appropriate resources that provide opportunities for sustainable competitive advantage in its chosen markets to maximize returns (Brown and Blackmon, 2005). In the planning process, competitive priorities have often been used to reflect the market requirements and firms’ choices, and the contingency between the choices of competitive priorities and the decisions in manufacturing strategy have been studied often (Ho, 1996; Ketokivi, 2006). On the other hand, in the resource-based view researchers hold that it is more appropriate to forget the trade-offs between competitive priorities in a hyper-competitive environment, and suggest a new planning process model for manufacturing strategy, which includes developing, protecting, and leveraging resources in a dynamic manner (Gagnon, 1999). Manufacturing paradigms are important choices for building manufacturing capabilities. How to match manufacturing capabilities with market requirements has become an important question under the changing environment. Acur and Bititci (2004) demonstrate how the business process-based approach (PROPHESY) facilitates the integration of resource- and market-based approaches to strategy management. Brown and Blackmon (2005) introduced the concept of ‘strategic resonance’ to dynamically link business-level strategy and manufacturing capabilities, market requirements and a firm's supply network. However, few empirical studies compared the performance between the strategic and paradigmatic links when planning manufacturing strategy. One reason for this is that it is difficult to hold a common view on the manufacturing capability since the competitive environment is under constant change. Our study focuses on a turbulent environment. A turbulent environment is characterized as the changing and uncertain requirements on competition. In this environment, change is not an exception, but a rule. In order to rapidly respond to frequent and sudden changes, some innovative manufacturing systems, best practices and SCM tools have been proposed. In this study, 31 innovative manufacturing systems and four manufacturing paradigms are examined. These manufacturing paradigms are characterized as the capability of dealing with changes and uncertainty and cover the process of whole supply chains. By examining the requirements in a turbulent environment and the response in manufacturing, this study may provide suggestions to discover the co-evolution between innovative activities in manufacturing and the institutional factors in a different environment, which is also included in studies on the Science of Institutional Management of Technology (SIMOT). The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In the second section, literatures on the relationships between the two approaches are reviewed and three models on the relationships are established. The third section describes the research methodology. In the fourth section, the results of measuring manufacturing strategy and business strategy are reported. The hypotheses are tested in the fifth section. In the last section, we present the conclusion and discuss the results.

The results show that in the relationship between business strategy and manufacturing paradigms, there is a significant difference in the performance of models with the mediate relationships through competitive priorities and the direct relationships. The latter has a better performance in the fitness to the real situation of leading firms. The results imply that under the turbulent environment, business strategy has a direct influence on the decisions on manufacturing paradigms, and competitive priorities cannot underlay the media roles between business strategy and manufacturing paradigms in the leading manufacturing firms in China. When planning MS, the strategic and paradigmatic approaches could be adopted at the same time, and the decisions on competitive priorities and manufacturing paradigms should be made, respectively, based on business strategy. The results can provide some suggestions for the planning process of manufacturing strategy under the turbulent environment and for the implementation of innovative systems and best practices. With regard to the planning process of manufacturing strategy under the turbulent environment, this result implies that it is difficult to coordinate the strategic and paradigmatic approaches through setting up the relationship between competitive priorities and manufacturing paradigms. One possible solution is to establish the coordination through the action plan or business-level strategy. On the practice level, detailed action plans may reflect the requirements on competitive priorities and on the manufacturing paradigms at the same time. Action plans based on competitive priorities may respond to the market requirement immediately; while, action plans based on manufacturing paradigms may respond to long-term market requirements. On the business-level strategy, business strategy may simultaneously include the direction function for competitive priorities and manufacturing paradigms. It requires the strategic planning process that needs to be re-examined based on the market-led and resource-based views, such as the studies on strategic resonance (Brown and Blackmon, 2005). To cite the example of a case study, the components of business strategy and manufacturing strategy of a leading global PC manufacturer include four views: the financial view, the customer view, the process view and the learning and growing view. The purposes in the process view support the customer view, which supports the financial view. The learning and growing view focuses on building competitive capabilities and includes the plans of introducing innovative manufacturing systems. In the detailed action plan between 2003 and 2007, four common topics can be found in its manufacturing strategy: improve quality, cost down, reduce lead time and differentiate manufacturing technologies. The content of quality, cost and delivery (QCD) changed with the improvement in the focus of manufacturing systems and supply chain. The detailed contents in the latter aspect changed annually and included some best practices or innovative manufacturing systems, such as RFID-based manufacturing systems, virtual manufacturing lines and the global SCM system for building to order/configure to order. On the adoption and improvement of innovative manufacturing systems or best practices, this result implies that competitive priorities cannot avoid the mediate roles between business strategy and manufacturing paradigms in the turbulent environment. This may be caused by the changes and uncertainty in a competitive environment, which make the linkage between strategy and systems come closer and require frequent adjustment. This necessitates a re-examination of the mediatory role of business strategy between a competitive environment and manufacturing strategy and of the role of manufacturing strategy in business strategy and production systems. Another reason for this may be the existence of a many-to-many relationship between improvement areas and innovative activities, which implies that every improvement area is generally pursued through various innovative approaches and these innovative activities in turn have different purposes (Spina, 1998). Based on the results, it is better to pay more attention to the business strategy at the requirement analysis stage when adopting or improving innovative systems or best practices. This may be difficult for the current introduction process, which focuses on the relationships between systems and functional strategy. Manufacturing paradigms are very useful; however, it may be impossible for firms to abandon the competitive priorities which are simple to understand and have been widely accepted. In practice, changing the role of competitive priorities may be a choice, such as from the direction role to the coordination role. Consider the example of this case study: a leading global PC manufacturer decided to move its factory to a place with sufficient cheap labor, easy availability of materials and a future market. However, the production technology and management departments will not be moved with the factory. One important reason for this is that a firm cannot fire employees easily. Therefore, the firm decided to build a virtual manufacturing system. The direct purpose is to reduce the paused time of the real lines by building the test environment in the virtual systems. When discussing this decision, the firm calculated the cost down from this investment and other advantages. To elaborate, three types of cost down are calculated: (1) cost down from the reduction of trip times to the real lines; (2) with the virtual systems, the time for preparing the test data can be reduced and (3) the time reduction in surveying the pause reasons in the real lines because of database technology problems and programming. Based on the investment and the analysis of competitive priorities, the general managers agree to adopt the virtual systems. In this decision process, the strategic decision on virtual manufacturing systems was made based on the business strategy of the firm, and also supported from the analysis of competitive priorities. However, the firm would not adopt the virtual manufacturing systems solely based on the competitive priorities analysis. This is not only because of the huge investment but mostly because this decision is a strategic one and needs coordination with other strategic decisions, such as the location of firms, the employment policy and market targets. In addition, the analysis of competitive priorities cannot help in discovering the whole possible profit from this strategic decision. For example, with the virtual manufacturing systems, the firm can avoid considerable risk in technology innovation. The results in this study suggest that innovative activities in the turbulent environment should be managed with an approach different from that in the traditional environment. The relationships between strategy and innovative systems or best practices are characterized as dynamic co-evolution. This co-evolutional relationship can be influenced not only by the contextual factors in the environment but also by the contents of innovative activities. In this study, it is shown that changes and uncertainty in the competitive environment force the relationships between strategy and system closer. On the other hand, the innovative systems call for an innovative theory on strategy and significantly change the relationships between strategy and systems. Therefore, we need to consider not only innovation in technology but also innovation in the theory of the management of technology. However, this study has some limitations. This study examined four important manufacturing paradigms in the turbulent environment and cannot cover all the important ones. Further research is needed to systematically analyze the innovation in manufacturing paradigms in a turbulent environment. We tested the relationships based on the samples only from China. An important line of future research is to test the stability of the relationships globally and over time.