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Analyses five major innovations in the flour milling industry and the variations in attitudes and adoption practices in group mills and individual plants. Advocates that it is important for research purposes that an industry is chosen in which technical innovation was high, and also where the total number of units in the country could be approached with regard to the very limited budget available for the research. The industry chosen was the flour milling industry. Discusses the choice of innovations and methodology. Sums up that much work still needs to be done with regard to sources of information and on the role of opinion leaders.

The objective of this study is to estimate the competitiveness for both the Greek food and beverage industry as a whole and the flour and milling industry, justifying the certain economic factors and the way which these factors affect on it.

The Greek food and beverage firms which published their balance sheets for the studying period were studied. According to the existing literature two equations were created and estimated as a simultaneous equations system.

Summarizing the results both for the whole food and beverage industry and the flour milling industry are observed significant similarities on how certain economics factors such as profitability, market share, sustainable growth, age and operating costs affect on competitiveness as measured in this work. This may happen due to the high degree of concentration but also in the special characteristics which present both the Greek food and beverage industry and the flour milling sector.

The fact that this work referred only in Greek firms can be a limitation of this research, in spite of that it can provide useful and safe conclusions for the Greek food manufacturing industry.

The provision of proposals for increasing firm competitiveness to managers as well as to policymakers.

The importance of food and beverage industry for the Greek economy as well as that the flour milling industry holds an important position in the Greek food and beverage industry makes the study of the competitiveness for both of them to be important from both an academic and research perspective.

The Greek food and beverage industry is the strength of Greek manufacturing and at the same time an important lever for the development of the entire Greek economy. The high quality products it produces and the organized promotion of its products in international markets are elements that give it an advantage and stimulate its competitiveness. The flour milling industry is one of the sectors in which there is intense competition and whose presence in terms of sales, turnover, employment and gross value is particularly important, so a simultaneous study of these cases is very important.

This case study deals specifically with the issue of manufacturing strategy, and business strategy.

The case can be used in a number of course contexts, including undergraduate and MBA programs. The focus is on both business strategy and manufacturing strategy issues. The case can be assigned as an opening vignette, during the initial phases of business strategy, since the case situations and concepts are both simple and clear. It can also be assigned for an in-depth treatment of manufacturing strategy.

The case focuses on Capital Mills Limited (CML), a flour milling company, and concentrates on whether the company should refurbish its two 40-year old flour mills at a cost of US$6 million or if the company should invest US$15 million in the construction and installation of a new, fully-automated “Lights out” flour mill. This decision is viewed as a “make or break” decision for CML, since for the first time in the company's 40 year history will it face significant direct competition, in the form of the impending entry of a second flour milling company.

The case has four primary learning objectives, namely to: illustrate the linkages between business level strategy and the functional level, manufacturing strategy; discuss the role of a company's history and internal resource structure in the decision making process; explore how operational issues influence capital expenditure decisions; and explore the perspective of managers in different functions in an organization that is facing a new competitive challenge.

Teaching notes are available – consult your librarian for access.

The purpose of this paper is to explain why the high quality cassava flour (HQCF) value chain in Nigeria has not performed as well as expected. The specific objectives are to: analyse important sources of uncertainty influencing HQCF value chains; explore stakeholders’ strategies to respond to uncertainty; and highlight the implications of different adaptation strategies for equity and the environment in the development of the value chain.

The authors used a conceptual framework based on complex adaptive systems to analyse the slow development of the value chain for HQCF in Nigeria, with a specific focus on how key stakeholders have adapted to uncertainty. The paper is based on information from secondary sources and grey literature. In particular, the authors have drawn heavily on project documents of the Cassava: Adding Value for Africa project (2008 to present), which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and on the authors’ experience with this project.

Policy changes; demand and supply of HQCF; availability and price of cassava roots; supply and cost of energy are major sources of uncertainty in the chain. Researchers and government have shaped the chain through technology development and policy initiatives. Farmers adapted by selling cassava to rival chains, while processors adapted by switching to rival cassava products, reducing energy costs and vertical integration. However, with uncertainties in HQCF supply, the milling industry has reserved the right to play. Vertical integration offers millers a potential solution to uncertainty in HQCF supply, but raises questions about social and environmental outcomes in the chain.

The use of the framework of complex adaptive systems helped to explain the development of the HQCF value chain in Nigeria. The authors identified sources of uncertainty that have been pivotal in restricting value chain development, including changes in policy environment, the demand for and supply of HQCF, the availability and price of cassava roots, and the availability and cost of energy for flour processing. Value chain actors have responded to these uncertainties in different ways. Analysing these responses in terms of adaptation provides useful insights into why the value chain for HQCF in Nigeria has been so slow to develop.

Recent developments suggest that the most effective strategy for the milling industry to reduce uncertainty in the HQCF value chain is through vertical integration, producing their own cassava roots and flour. This raises concerns about equity. Until now, it has been assumed that the development of the value chain for HQCF can combine both growth and equity objectives. The validity of this assumption now seems to be open to question. The extent to which these developments of HQCF value chains can combine economic growth, equity and environmental objectives, as set out in the sustainable development goals, is an open question.

The originality lies in the analysis of the development of HQCF value chains in Nigeria through the lens of complex adaptive systems, with a particular focus on uncertainty and adaptation. In order to explore adaptation, the authors employ Courtney et al.’s (1997) conceptualization of business strategy under conditions of uncertainty. They argue that organisations can assume three strategic postures in response to uncertainty and three types of actions to implement that strategy. This combination of frameworks provides a fresh means of understanding the importance of uncertainty and different actors’ strategies in the development of value chains in a developing country context.

The purpose of this paper is to address a research gap relating to the understanding of how one type of manufacturing flexibility – mix flexibility – is achieved during day‐to‐day operations.

Constructs from coordination theory are used in order to understand the way in which physical manufacturing resources are coordinated during daily operations to produce a company's product mix. A multiple case study methodology is used to investigate the applicability of these constructs in the flour milling industry. Subsequently, a conceptual framework is proposed which captures the coordination mechanisms used in the achievement of mix flexibility.

The paper finds that mix flexibility requirements influence how a company achieves mix flexibility. Further, the findings indicate that, at an operational level, mix flexibility is achieved via the use of coordination mechanisms to manage specific dependencies relating to mix flexibility requirements.

Mix flexibility achievement was studied in a single industry. Future research can test the applicability of the conceptual framework in other manufacturing settings.

An empirical contribution to the study of manufacturing flexibility achievement has been made, where the application of constructs from coordination theory presents a novel approach to the study of manufacturing flexibility achievement.

Bases itself on the premise that the categorisation of people who may adopt innovations is not the sole answer to the length of time taken for diffusion of innovations, but that a major factor is the characteristic of the innovations as perceived by adopters or non‐adopters. Says that marketers have an interest in decreasing the time taken for an innovation to diffuse throughout an industry by changing people from one category into another which is more progressive in outlook. States that two main industries were chosen to be used in this study – the flour milling industry and, to a lesser degree, the malting and dairying industries. Decided that the relationships between the time taken for innovations to diffuse throughout industry, and the characteristics of the innovations as perceived by technologists responsible for their introduction. Lays out the research method in detail and discusses this. Sums up that the research illustrates a method of studying the perceived characteristics technological innovation and shows a strong relationship between innovations and time taken.

The protection of industrial heritage emerged as a major concern when those buildings and installations representative of the industry, became at risk. North Africa, considered the geographical gateway to European countries, experienced enormous industrial activity during the French colonial era. Industrial buildings such as the flour mills, were built during this era of colonial rule. Today, a lack of legislation concerning industrial heritage has left this type of buildings with no protection, leading this paper to a preservation process. The aim of this paper is to locate and identify the flour mills of the 19th and 20th centuries in Algeria.

This research consists of cross-referencing data from archived documents against the geographical location.

The results obtained are the first step in the process of preservation. The success of this research can be summarized as follows: identification of 88.46% of the flour mills in Algeria by means of the inventory data collected, and their location, with the use of a crisp logic, the remaining 9.62% with the use of fuzzy logic by the attribution of a “fuzzy radius” with a total localization and identification of 98.08%.

The use of both crisp (Boolean) and fuzzy logic as part of the geographical localization method.

Factors which influence consumer spending, among the most sought after in any field of market research, things people buy and why, is valuable data on which much industrial planning, advertising techniques and marketing is based, but in no other field of trade is consumer preference so closely related to pure economics, i.e., value received in money terms, as in food. With most other commodities, from clothes to cars, hair‐do's to houses, factors affecting consumer choice have different results; appearance, aesthetic quality and neighbourly competition, all play a part, though appearance in a few foods is not entirely without significance, e.g., white bread. Present high levels of consumer spending are said by politicians to be a danger to the country's economy; a more prosaic thought would be that Government spending, or squandering, constituted the greater threat. In the main, factors which influence household food expenditure are essentially down to earth—palatability, digestibility, keeping quality and how far a food will go in the preparation of meals, its value in money terms. The king‐pin in all market research on food must be the woman of the house; it is her laying out of the household purse that determines the amount of food expenditure and the varieties purchased week by week. A housewife's choice, however, is a complex of her family's likes and dislikes, rarely her own, and also determined by the amount allocated from her purse for this part of the household budget and the number of mouths she has to feed. Any tendency to experiment, to extend the variety of food, is only possible with a well‐filled purse; with a large family, a common complaint is of monotony in the diet. A factor of immense importance nowadays is whether the housewife is employed or not, and whether whole‐time or part‐time, and which part of the day she can be in her own home. To this may be attributed, as much as anything, the rise in consumption of convenience foods. Fortunately for the purposes of reasonable accuracy in the results of enquiries, housewives form a class, reliable and steady, unlikely to be contaminated by the palsied opinions of the so‐called lunatic fringe in this unquiet age. Any differences in food choice are likely to be regional, and settled dietary habits, passed on from one generation to another. Statistics from the National Food Surveys show the extent of these, and also consumer preferences as far as food commodity groups are concerned. The Surveys have been running long enough to show something of consumer trends but, of course, they do not exhibit reasons—why consumers buy and use certain foods, their attitudes to food marketing practices, and, in particular, to advertising. Advertising claims, misleading undoubtedly but within the law, have long been a source of controversy between those who worship at the shrine of truth and others less particular. Elsewhere, we review a special study of consumer reactions to aspects of the grocery trade in the U.S.A., and note that 32 per cent do not accept advertisements as being true, but 85 per cent find them interesting and informative. Advertising practices are probably subject to less statutory control in the United States than here, and the descriptions and verbiage certainly reach greater heights of absurdity, but the British housewife is likely to be no more discerning, able “to read between the lines”, than her counterpart in that country. A major difference, however, is that in Britain, more houswives prepare and cook meals for their families than in the United States. The greatest importance of advertising is in the introductory phase of a commodity; new and more vigorous advertising is necessary later to delay the onset of the decline phase of the commodity's life cycle; to ensure that sales can be maintained to prevent rises in supply costs. Advertising helps considerably in the acceptance of a branded food, but housewives tend to ignore cut‐throat competition between rival brands, and what weans a consumer from a brand is not competition in advertising, nor even new and more attractive presentation, but reduction in real price. The main pre‐occupation of the woman of the house is food adequacy, and especially that her children will have what she considers conforms to a nutritious diet, without argument or rebellion on the part of her progeny and without distinction. She knows that bulk foods, carbohydrates, are not necessarily nutritious, although her ideas of which foods contain vitamins or minerals or other important nutrient factors tends to be hazy. She does not pretend to enjoy shopping for food and therefore tends to follow a routine; it saves time and worry. Especially is this so with young married women, who may have to take small children along. Each housewife has her own mental standard of assessing “value”, and would have difficulty in defining it. Nutritional value forms part of it, however, in most women, who connote their food provision with health. The greatest concern is not necessarily positive health, but prevention or reduction of obesity, which is seen among adult members of the family, especially growing girls, as an adverse effect on their appearance, and the types of clothes they can wear. A few of the more intelligent families have an indefinable fear of ischaemic heart disease and its relation to food. When they take positive steps to control the diet for these purposes, they are quite frequently in the wrong direction and rather confused even when this is done on medical advice.

The formulated proposals for this legal principle in the trade battern of the European Community have again appeared in the EEC draft Directive. It has been many years in coming, indicating the extreme difficulties encountered in bringing some sort of harmony in the different laws of Member‐states including those of the United Kingdom, relating to the subject. Over the years there were periods of what appeared to be complete inactivity, when no progress was being made, when consultations were at a stand‐still, but the situation was closely monitored by manufacturers of goods, including food and drink, in the UK and the BFJ published fairly detailed reviews of proposals being considered — in 1979 and 1981; and even as recently as the last few months — in “Consumerism in the Community”, the subject was briefly discussed.

This article looks at how capital equipment innovations are adopted. The reception of innovations by adoptors and non‐adoptors provides “profiles” of the characteristics of innovations, which can highlight good selling features and identify markets.