Effect of manufacturing and information processing competences on realized manufacturing strategy and performance

This is an empirical investigation in the area of manufacturing strategy implementation. This research investigates the relationship of manufacturing and information system competencies with the implemented manufacturing strategy and with performance. Since implementations of manufacturing strategies are carried out at the plant level, this research will confine itself to the manufacturing context at this level.; This research is an attempt to fill the research gap in different arenas in manufacturing strategy research. First, it will add to the very few empirical investigations in the manufacturing strategy area. The lack of such investigations is considered a hindrance in the theory building efforts. Secondly, the interactions between the manufacturing and information processing technologies are vital to understanding manufacturing strategy in modern manufacturing entities. There is paucity of empirical research in this arena. Thirdly, although it has been realized that superiority in technology does not guarantee superior capabilities and, resource based view can be utilized adequately define capabilities, only few manufacturing strategy researchers have actually adopted this view. There is one (to the best of our knowledge) empirical research (with large-scale data collection) in this important subject. Aside from those, this research also clearly distinguishes between the implementation and the formulation of strategy, and investigates the role of competencies and their impact on the strategy in the implementation. It also develops a well rounded performance measure, to incorporate all the financial and non-financial performance.; This research reviews literature in areas including manufacturing strategy, resource-based view and performance measures, and develops a model. According to this model manufacturing competence and information system competence directly affect implementation of manufacturing strategy at the plant level and in turn, the performances are impacted by the extent to which manufacturing plants are able to implement the manufacturing strategy. The model is empirically tested with the data collected from 207 manufacturing plants in the mid-west region of the United States of America.