Setting manufacturing strategy for a factory-within-a-factory

John Miltenburg

International Journal of Production Economics, 2008, vol. 113, issue 1, 307-323

Abstract: Manufacturing strategy is a plan for moving a company from where it is to where it wants to be. Determining the best manufacturing strategy is not easy because of the wide range of choices and constraints a company faces. Manufacturing strategy frameworks or models are helpful because they identify the objects that comprise manufacturing strategy and organize these objects into a structure that enables a company to understand and use the objects to develop strategy. Many frameworks are possible and there is no single framework that is best for all companies. In this paper, we are interested in the levels of cost, quality, delivery, and flexibility that manufacturing provides for each product family it produces. This is determined primarily by a company's factories-within-a-factory (FWFs) and so the level of analysis in this paper is the FWF. We identify and examine five manufacturing strategy objects (production systems, manufacturing outputs, manufacturing levers, manufacturing capability, competitive analysis), linkages between these objects, and the manufacturing strategy framework for an FWF that follows from these objects and linkages. We apply the framework to the FWFs of two multi-national companies. This paper is descriptive and exploratory. Strategy objects, linkages, and framework are presented and their use is illustrated. The work of rigorous empirical analysis is left for future research.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925-5273(07)00290-3
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:proeco:v:113:y:2008:i:1:p:307-323

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Economics is currently edited by Stefan Minner

More articles in International Journal of Production Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().