Strategic positioning: an integrated decision process for manufacturers

Abstract

Strategic positioning of a manufacturer concerns choosing those service, production and supply chain related activities that an organisation should carry out internally, and those that should be external and under the ownership and control of suppliers, partners and customers. This paper describes research that has investigated how manufacturers make this decision and what, if any, are the characteristics of a successful approach to forming such decisions. Six UK manufacturing companies have been studied in-depth and, in each case, the decision making processes that practitioners actually apply have been explored, recorded and analysed. This study has revealed distinctly different styles of thinking across these companies. Based on this insight the paper proposes three key principles that manufacturers should adopt when forming strategic positioning decisions.

Manufacturing strategy frameworks suitable for SMEs

“…However, only a few frameworks are simple and easy to understand, based on the fact that they comprise a limited number of defined steps and pictures (Wheelwright, 1978;Kim andArnold, 1996, Slack andLewis, 2002). A number of frameworks are neither simple nor difficult to understand (Hill, 1989;Crowe and Cheng, 1996;Baines et al, 2005;Jia and Bai, 2011). These are labelled average simplicity (avg) in Table IV, as they consist of many steps or the description that exists is too vague in describing how to use the frameworks.…”

Aligning manufacturing strategy and levels of automation: A case study

“…Procedure of the processes is well described and achieves high consistency Tools and techniques are well described Managing the formulation process is an area for improvement Communication and commitment are areas for improvement Apart from the ten reviewed manufacturing strategy formulation processes there are several other described processes that combine and integrate corporate, business and manufacturing strategy or describe the strategy formulation on business level (Porter, 1980;Swamidass et al, 2001;Acur and Bititci, 2004;Baines et al, 2005;Acur and Englyst, 2006).…”

“…The objective of the case study was to understand the design of the process and the content of each sub-process. The studied process, called StratNav (Strategic Navigator) contains five stages that takes the user and participant through a review of competitive strategy, then identification of key decision criteria, identification of key manufacturing capabilities, development of strategic initiatives, and last consolidation of outcomes (Baines et al, 2005). After the case study was done, the design of a new process for embedding the LoA measurement methodology in manufacturing strategy was initiated.…”

“…1. The Dynamo methodology in eight steps Frohm, 2008) 3.4 Phase 4: embedding the measurement methodology in the process of manufacturing strategy formulation During the fourth phase of the research programme, a case study was done for studying a strategy formulation process intended to decide strategic positioning of a firm (Baines et al, 2005;Baines, 2008). This case study was part of a course in manufacturing strategy held at Cranfield University in the UK during January 2008 and was characterized by team work and iteration between theory and practice.…”

“…From this sampling, 10 manufacturing strategy formulation processes were collected where a linkage between either corporate strategy or business strategy and the functional manufacturing strategy could be found. Then evaluation criteria were identified primarily from (Platts, 1994;Platts et al, 1998;Platts and Tan, 2004;Baines et al, 2005;Tan and Platts, 2005) for reviewing the sampled processes. After this step, the review of the 10 selected processes was analysed against the criteria chosen.…”