MANUFACTURING-LED COMPETITIVENESS: USE MATHS NOT MYTHS

Many batch manufacturing businesses stagger from one period-end despatch crisis to another. Such organizational behaviour is a consequence of too great an emphasis on financial measures of performance and poor production throughput management. There is very little published research that provides a plan for an escape from this unfortunate cycle of events. This paper is based upon research designed to provide such a strategy. A model is presented to aid the process of manufacturing strategy planning with descriptions of the generic manufacturing strategies identified by the research. To achieve manufacturing-led competitive advantage will require many businesses to restructure their operations. The type of audit required to prepare for the needed transformation to their methods of production is detailed in the paper. Significant as these changes are, they are perhaps not as difticult to implement as the acceptance of the radically different performance measurements used to manage manufacturing operations in the 1990s. The measures to use to achieve manufacturing-led competitiveness is the principal subject of this paper