Relating objectives to manufacturing decisions in dynamic environments: implications of an exploratory study of Indian and German manufacturing firms

R.R.K. Sharma, Shobhit Shrotriya, Anshuman Behera and G. Seliger

International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management, 2003, vol. 5, issue 5/6, 472-491

Abstract: Competitive priority and the corporate strategy of a firm determine the objectives of its manufacturing division. A few of these objectives considered in this paper are product variety, volume flexibility and delivery performance. These manufacturing objectives drive the manufacturing decisions such as plant, equipment, PPC, labour skills, organisation structure, vertical integration and nature of vendor relations. A static view of relations between the objectives and decisions for manufacturing firms is given in Miles and Snow et al. We carry out a theoretical analysis of 28 dynamic cases when objectives change on one or more dimensions and study the nature of changes required on manufacturing decisions. We classify 16 cases as the "most difficult" to change as these require drastic changes in the decisions. The remaining 12 cases had either "moderate difficulty" or "easy to achieve" changes. Data on 14 German and 22 Indian manufacturing firms gave good support to the theoretical framework developed in this paper.

Keywords: manufacturing strategy; manufacturing decisions; changes in objectives. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
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