| Manufacturing strategy is a means of integrating operations management decisions and linking them with the firm's business strategy. A conceptual paradigm is proposed that defines the key components and the process of managing manufacturing strategy. The key to understanding manufacturing strategy is to recognize that the relationships among decisions or manufacturing actions differ under different competitive scenarios. This research empirically examines some relationships on data collected from 150 manufacturing plants.;Measurement analysis is first performed to test the reliability of the variables proposed for measuring some decisions and then relationships are examined among the decisions. Measures are analyzed for seven competitive priorities (cost, quality level, quality consistency, delivery dependability, delivery time, product flexibility and volume flexibility), product diversity, demand volume, demand uncertainty, positioning strategy, span of process, automation-scale and automation-scope. Relationships are analyzed among competitive priorities to test the notion of niche. Relationships among product-diversity, demand-volume, demand-uncertainty, span-of-process and positioning-strategy are also analyzed.;Confirmatory factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha coefficient are used to assess the reliability of the measures. Covariance structure analysis is used to test relationships. The analysis resulted in reliable measures of three competitive priorities: cost, quality level and quality consistency. The results show that competitive priorities are a multi-dimensional concept. Reliable measures for product-diversity, demand volume, demand uncertainty, positioning strategy and span-of-process were identified. The relationships analyzed support the product-process matrix.;As this research is one of the first in operations management of systematically conduct measurement analyses some measurement issues and an approach is discussed to help future research. Future research directions and methodologies for studying manufacturing strategy is also discussed. |
