Competitive priorities, process innovations and time‐based competition in the manufacturing sectors of industrialising economies

Abstract

The topic of competitive priorities has attracted many of those interested in manufacturing strategy and stimulated a number of surveys in manufacturing industry. Much of this empirical work concentrates on large companies in industrialised economies while asserting the general applicability of findings. In contrast the survey reported here was conducted in a newly industrialising country, Turkey, focusing on small to medium‐sized manufacturing enterprises. Key personnel in 41 companies were questioned about the priorities of cost, quality, flexibility and, in particular, time. Process innovations, since these enable improvements in competitive priorities, were also examined. General similarities were evident between the Turkish, other European, and US situations. However, certain elements of quality and time were not ranked as highly in Turkey and the adoption levels of process innovations were lower. In contrast to US data, connections between competitiveness and time‐related performance measures were not apparent. Conclusions were drawn that Turkish manufacturing industry was generally at an earlier, quality‐dependent, stage in developing competitiveness and that time‐based competition was not yet evident.

Competitive Priorities and Innovation in SMEs: A Brazil Multi-Case Study

“…To Burgess et al (1998), cost has already been considered the great competitive priority. However, there is a tendency in pointing quality and flexibility, more and more, as primordial aspects to the future.…”

“…According to some authors autores (Skinner, 1969;Burgess et al, 1998;Garrido et al, 2011) generally competitive priorities indicate which performance areas should be emphasized to guarantee the competitive success of a company. Once the priorities are defined, they should be applied considering the competitive environment in which the company is: if innovation is a central element in the production strategy, the competitive priorities should be pursued in order to beat the competitors by means of new forms of their elaborations (Wheelwright and Bowen, 1996).…”

“…So, individually companies strive to improve their performance in the competitive priorities in several ways. As a consequence, they take measures to improve the competitive performance through the adoption of innovations as, for example, process innovation, total quality management and/or simultaneous engineering (Burgess et al, 1998).…”

“…On the other side, there are authors (Burgess et al, 1998;Becheikh et al, 2006;Weerawardena and Mavondo, 2011;Gunduz and Semercioz, 2012) that analyze the influence exerted by the adopted strategies by companies in the creation of innovation. Weerawardena and Mavondo (2011), for example, assert that in the last decade the vision based on capabilities obtained by means of competitive strategy emerged as a theoretical framework to heterogeneity in the different performance levels of companies.…”

Medição de tempo de atravessamento e inventário em processo em manufatura controlada por ordens de fabricação

“…Rich e Hines (1997) desenvolveram o conceito de TBC em cadeias de suprimentos. Burgess et al (1998) investigaram a relação entre competitividade em manufatura e desempenho em TBC em país de industrialização recente, comparando-o com país industrializado. Jayaram, Vickery e Droge (1999) examinaram TBC em fornecedores de primeira camada de três montadoras de veículos dos EUA, defi nindo indicadores de desempenho e programas de manufatura relacionados a este tipo de competição.…”