Comment: Using Product Profiling to Illustrate Manufacturing-Marketing Misalignment

Richard J. Schonberger
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Richard J. Schonberger: Schonberger & Associates, Inc., P.O. Box 66948, Seattle, Washington 98166 and Department of Management Science, School of Business, University of Washington, Box 353200, Seattle, Washington 98195-3200

Interfaces, 1999, vol. 29, issue 6, 127-129

Abstract: In their July–August 1998 article, Hill, Menda, and Dilts described Rumack Pharmaceutical Company (disguised name) as an example of misalignment between marketing and manufacturing. The problem was that marketing had stretched the product line beyond manufacturing's capacity limits. The authors stated that operations managers took an action that “would seem unwise or contrary to accepted practice in many of today's manufacturing organizations. Rumack decided to increase production lot sizes by an average of 100 percent” [p. 61]. The authors were respectful (appropriately, in view of Rumack's open door to their research) of the deliberations that resulted in this decision. Many readers, though, will probably wonder, as I do, about the correctness of the decision, considering the widely held impression that lot sizes should fall, not rise.

Keywords: industries; pharmaceutical; manufacturing; strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
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