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In the 1980s the level of interest of businessmen and academics shown in the subject area of production/operations management (POM) has risen. Stimulated by the impact of world competition they are increasingly recognising the contribution which POM can make to business success. This has led to increasing awareness of manufacturing strategy which is currently underdeveloped. Industry is looking towards the academic world to contribute to the development of its conceptual base. At present the POM subject area is wide‐ranging and relatively under‐sourced in academic institutions. It is necessary to define the boundaries of manufacturing strategy, to establish academic course orientation, the predominant level of learning, course aims and appropriate areas of learning. Some basic teaching issues are outlined including a framework for reflecting manufacturing policy issues in corporate decisions, and ways to develop key issues within a teaching programme.

Manufacturing strategy is an often overlooked aspect of strategic planning in organizations. However, as this article illustrates, firms must move from departmental optimization toward overall organization optimization using a system's approach to best utilize the manufacturing benefits for global competitive success. While the ideas are not new, management continually needs a reminder of the potential of manufacturing to strengthen an organization's competitive ability. Specific examples of integrating manufacturing and the possible positive results are presented. Avenues for future research are also discussed.

Here's the answer to “why” and “how” “global” manufacturing strategy should be integrated into corporate strategy.

Competitive performances of manufacturing firms are affected by the strategies they selected. The implementations of strategies, as usually assumed, rely on the effectiveness of work teams. The performances of teams, to a large degree, are directed by team leaders. Therefore, the compatibility between competitive performances, manufacturing strategies, and the functions of team leaders should be explored. Based on the statistical findings obtained from other literature as well as an analysis of an international survey of manufacturing strategies. It is proposed that the compatibility is basically the relationship between the knowledge seeking behavior of team leaders and the knowledge required for improving competitive performances. We also discovered that it is worth further investigating two particular types of team leaders, i.e. shaper and company builder. Their characteristics may provide a basis to expand our understandings of team leaders’ performances and the competence‐based organizations of today.

An integrated, exchangeable, sharable and distributed information environment is one of the crucial factors to ensure the competitive advantage of a virtual enterprise. A manufacturing model that describes an enterprise’s manufacturing capability information is an important part of such a distributed information infrastructure. This paper focuses on the definition of an object oriented manufacturing data model that can provide a consistent data structure for the construction of a manufacturing model for a virtual enterprise. The methodology that is employed to carry out the analysis and design of an object oriented manufacturing data model complies with the open distributed processing reference model. Unified modelling language (UML) class diagrams have been employed to represent the object oriented manufacturing data model with links to relevant ISO standards, which can be instantiated to generate a virtual, global manufacturing model. An experimental software system has been developed using ObjectStore OODBMS and Visual C++. An example manufacturing model for a simple virtual enterprise has been populated and can potentially be used to support product design and manufacturing decisions across a virtual enterprise.

Fieldwork in several “best practice” companies showed that the important performance objectives sought to fulfil each company’s manufacturing strategy were achieved through the use of initiatives and supporting enablers. A manufacturing excellence framework shows how these initiatives and enablers combine to support manufacturing excellence. This work explores the validity and usefulness of this framework by means of a postal survey conducted across a wide base of manufacturing companies in the UK. The nature of the questionnaire is outlined together with the results from the analysis of the data obtained from the questionnaire. The results show the framework will contribute significantly to manufacturing excellence. Also when the framework is used to identify those initiatives that are crucial to the fulfilment of the manufacturing strategy then the company’s overall business strategy is more effectively executed.

This article presents a case study for designing a workshop for strategic planning. By describing the process of selecting, designing, and implementing a manufacturing strategy workshop as a marketable instructional product in a high‐tech company, the article illuminates the role of training and development in strategic planning. It describes how a workshop for manufacturing strategic planning was selected and developed by taking a market‐oriented approach to reflect customer needs. The interactive, collaborative design process among stakeholders was practiced, and a continuous needs assessment was employed to explore and exploit customer needs throughout the design cycle. The workshop covered both the conceptual and the experiential, and learning‐by‐doing was a key instructional strategy adopted. The article concludes by discussing key learnings acquired.

In this paper, we present a planning and control framework for manufacture‐to‐order environments that enables and supports agile‐based discrete parts manufacturing. The characteristic elements of our framework are that it is decentralized, logistics and business oriented, and that it recognizes that more detailed and more reliable data become available as orders advance through the different manufacturing stages and departments. Furthermore, it is a generic framework in that it applies to any discrete parts manufacturer, ranging from an engineer‐to‐order to an assemble‐to‐order company. We also point out the necessity of an organizational structure that supports and reinforces the framework. Particularly, we discuss the adoption and implementation of the new framework by creating multi‐disciplinary teams and structural and operational supporting groups to strengthen the organization for agile manufacturing.

Focuses on the synchronous manufacturing system (SMS), a manufacturing management methodology that introduces various operational measures that help increase the performance of the system for optimum production quantity. Enlightens the effects of bottleneck resources and capacity constraints and suggests remedies for synchronized flow in the shop floor. Also recommends methods for production control in synchronous manufacturing, brings together the concepts and elements of marketing and manufacturing along with production quantity. Gives information about several factors that should be taken into consideration while applying synchronous manufacturing methodology in marketing and manufacturing. Shows the results, conclusion and future scope.

The paper seeks to report on some of the preliminary results of an ongoing scoping study into the shape of the manufacturing enterprise of the future.

This paper evolved through a combination of literature review, focused group discussions, interviews and a questionnaire survey of six aerospace companies in the UK. It is primarily an attempt to provide a broad framework for synthesizing some of the information generally available as a contribution to the current debate regarding the future of manufacturing systems.

The results to date show that the product development process and supply network efficiency are the two most significant domains influencing manufacturing responsiveness. Within those domains, customer driven product development and supply chain design, intelligent and flexible technology, producibility analysis, integrated product and process development and the concurrency of the extended manufacturing enterprise are considered as the most significant elements towards achieving responsiveness. In addition a Responsive Manufacturing Model (RMM) is provided.

The RMM reported in the paper is at an early state of development and the work is ongoing to refine it further. The development of appropriate measures and methods of assessment for the various facets and attributes of manufacturing responsiveness is an important step towards full model development which is still to be addressed.

The process of structuring the various elements influencing manufacturing responsiveness into logical groups in a hierarchical model has proved very useful during model development. It proved a significant aid during the focused group discussions and interviews that preceded completion of the questionnaire. The results to date are very encouraging and provide several interesting insights into the domains and elements of manufacturing responsiveness and the relative importance attached to them in the UK aerospace sector.

The work was funded by EPSRC (IMI) research grant as it was the first attempt in this field over within the UK. The proposed model and the obtained results have led to another research project funded by EPSRC over three years to further investigate the proposed model and the implication of its implementation.