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This paper is aimed at overcoming the contrast between the paradigmatic views and the strategic approaches to manufacturing. It challenges the idea that the paradigmatic perspective actually narrows the strategic space for manufacturers to build their own competitive advantages, because it drives them to conform to emerging best practice. The empirical evidence is drawn from a global sample of 79 production units in the engineering industry that revealed consistent orientation to the strategically flexible production, an emerging manufacturing paradigm characterised by three generic principles to organise and manage production systems, namely: multi‐focusedness and strategic flexibility; integration of business processes across functions and firms’ boundaries; and process ownership, i.e. delegation, involvement and harnessing of intellectual capabilities of the workers. The purpose of the article is twofold: first, to verify the existence of different manufacturing strategies within strategically flexible production, in terms of improvement goals and innovative programs; and, second, to build an empirically‐based taxonomy of such strategies.

Innovation is a complex process, one easily identified as being of critical importance for organisational success yet not easily managed. As international competition intensifies and product life cycles shorten, the pressure to innovate heightens. This paper compares the effectiveness of radical, incremental, and integrated innovation strategies on performance excellence. Hypotheses are tested in a cross‐sectional study of Australian and New Zealand manufacturing companies. Quantitative data was gathered from a large sample in a mail survey of manufacturing site managers and analysed using multivariate analysis techniques. Three performance excellence outcomes (customer satisfaction, productivity, and technological competitiveness) were used as dependent variables in the regression models. The major finding of the study is that a “bottom‐up” continuous improvement strategy is the preferred strategy to improve customer satisfaction and productivity in Australian and New Zealand manufacturing firms. On the other hand, a “top‐down” strategy is considered appropriate for increasing relative technological competitiveness. Surprisingly, an integrated strategy had the least explanatory power on performance excellence. This is consistent with the literature perception that firms have not reached a stage of systems integration and networking. The main implication of the study for practicing managers is that a continuous incremental improvement strategy is the major driving force behind any improvement effort, and that radical innovations should be used to “jump start” critical products, services, and processes intermittently. Once these strategies are in place, managers will be well on their way in achieving systems integration.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contributions of successful continuous improvement (CI) strategic implementation to competitive manufacturing. It also seeks to critically examine the level of importance of CI strategy implementation in Indian manufacturing organizations.

A reasonably large number of manufacturing organizations with successful experience of CI approach have been surveyed to assess the contributions of CI strategies and approach towards accruing useful benefits. The study involves working out the correlations between various CI strategies and manufacturing performance parameters to ascertain the contributions of significant strategies towards realization of manufacturing performance improvement.

The results of investigation demonstrated that CI strategies and approach significantly aimed at improving the quality of product manufactured by small- and medium-scale manufacturing enterprises. Supportive tools have negative impact on manufacturing performance parameters. Total productive maintenance strategies have highly significant impact on manufacturing performance improvement.

The study establishes that CI strategic implementation can systematically contribute towards realization of significant manufacturing performance enhancements.

The study highlights both positive and negative potentials of CI strategic implementation affecting performance improvements. The achievements of Indian manufacturing organizations through proactive CI approach have been evaluated and the critical impact of CI strategies has been identified for enhancing the effectiveness of CI activities in the Indian context.

The purpose of this paper is to compare a range of quality and continuous improvement strategies and to investigate whether there is a best choice of strategy for use within the medical devices sector.

A brief literature‐based review of a number of continuous improvement strategies. Comparison of these strategies and a subsequent discussion of the rationale that guides the choice of strategy based on the prevailing conditions. An overview of this process in the context of the medical devices sector is provided.

Quality and continuous improvement strategies can be differentiated in terms of their cultural or process focus. Moreover, the favoured leadership style of an organisation may play a part in determining which strategies are likely to be most appropriate. From the medical device and healthcare product perspective, regulatory and purchasing considerations will have a role in determining the strategy adopted.

For managers seeking to implement a strategy for continuous improvement, a review of organisational leadership styles may help the decision–making process. For the medical devices sector, in particular, the need to align the strategy adopted with regulatory requirements is perhaps self‐evident. However, only by a detailed understanding of the issues involved in continuous improvement, can all of the attendant benefits be gained.

The paper proposes a link between a given organisation's favoured leadership style and the applicability of a particular continuous improvement strategy. The implications for the medical device and healthcare technologies sector are specifically addressed.

The study of internal and external consistency of manufacturing choices is a central theme in the literature of manufacturing strategy. However, most empirical studies lack dynamic perspective in facing this problem. This paper explores on an empirical, longitudinal basis the role of strategic priorities and past experience in driving the selection of manufacturing improvement programmes. A completely aligned selection is expected when the choice of the improvement programme is coherent with both the change in manufacturing priorities and the past experience of the programme implementation. Partially aligned and misaligned choices derive from the coherence with only one or none of the two driving factors. Different patterns of selection have been detected that depend both on the programme and on company‐specific factors. Starting from the level of strategic alignment of company’s choices, guidelines are provided in order to manage effectively the process of manufacturing strategy formulation.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of collecting and acting on student feedback as a key component of quality improvement in higher education. The paper seeks to outline a systematic improvement strategy adopted at a faculty level within a large university in Australia but will be of interest to leaders and practitioners of quality assurance programmes across the sector.

A strategy to achieve quality improvement was designed and carried out jointly by the University Centre for Higher Education Quality (CHEQ) and the Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching (CALT) with staff in one of the smaller faculties at the University. The faculty mean for student satisfaction lagged significantly below the means of other faculties, and five units (subjects) which were deemed to be “poorly performing” against the University's agreed target were selected for some intensive improvement. The guiding principles which underpinned the adopted strategy included: utilising student feedback data; targeting poorly performing units as a priority; linking staff and student development support; and documenting and demonstrating improvement as a consequence of the actions taken.

A post‐test evaluation of the five target units showed improvement in the form of increased student satisfaction. The strategy adopted at the University underlined the significance of collecting student feedback in quality enhancement, acting on the feedback and supporting academic staff in implementing improvements. Overall, the strategy signalled the interconnection between student evaluations and the quality of education programmes.

The successful implementation of a unit improvement strategy at a faculty level within the University demonstrated the value of the approach and recommended its application as an improvement strategy across the whole institution, provided that the internal context of individual faculties is taken into consideration. This case study may also offer some guidance to other tertiary institutions looking into utilising evidence‐based planning and decision making as a way of driving quality improvement.

Many tertiary institutions around the world are currently collecting student feedback. However, the interconnection between the student feedback and actual institutional change is not always evident or addressed. Therefore, this University case study offers some direction towards a more effective utilisation of student evaluation data.

Quality improvement is understood by Juran to be the systematic pursuit of improvement opportunities in production processes. Several methodologies are proposed in literature for quality improvement projects. Three of these methodologies – Taguchi's methods, the Shainin system and the Six Sigma programme – are compared. The comparison is facilitated by a methodological framework for quality improvement. The methodological weaknesses and strong points of each strategy are highlighted. The analysis shows that the Shainin system focuses mainly on the identification of the root cause of problems. Both Taguchi's methods and the Six Sigma programme exploit statistical modelling techniques. The Six Sigma programme is the most complete strategy of the three.

In a previous study, based on a survey to all clinical department and primary care center managers in Sweden, it was concluded that the prevailing general improvement strategy is characterized by: drivers for improvement are staff needs; patients and data are not as important; improvements mainly focus on administrative routines and stress management; improvements are mainly reached, by writing guidelines, and conducting meetings; the majority of managers perceive outcomes from this strategy as successful. The purpose of current research in this paper is to investigate whether there is any other improvement strategy at play in Swedish health care.

Data from the study of all Swedish managers were stratified into two populations based on an instrument predicting successful improvement. One population represented organizations with exceptionally high probability of successful imrpovement and remaining organizations represented the general improvement strategy.

The paper finds that organizations with high probability for successful change differed from the comparison population at the p=0.05 level in many of the surveyed characteristics. They put emphasis on patient focus, measuring outcomes, feedback of data, interorganizational collaboration, learning and knowledge, communication/information, culture, and development of administration and management. Thus these organizations center their attention towards behavioral changes supported by data.

Organizations predicted to conduct successful improvement apply comprehensive improvement strategies as suggested in the literature. Such actions are part of the Patient Centered Task Alignment strategy and it is suggested that this concept has managerial implications as well, as it might be useful in further studies on improvement work in health care.

This paper provides empirically based findings on a successful improvement strategy that can aid research‐informed policy decisions on organizational improvement strategies.

This paper explores how the manufacturer’s strategic choice (acquisition or investment) impacts product quality in a supply chain comprising two complementary suppliers and a common manufacturer.

The manufacturer faces six strategic choices to improve product quality: acquiring or investing in the high-capable supplier, the low-capable supplier, or both. As the Stackelberg leader, the manufacturer determines which strategy is adopted, while suppliers are separately responsible for components’ quality and wholesale prices. The authors use game theory and calculate the model with Mathematica.

The authors develop analytical models to analyze how acquisition costs, investment proportions, component importance and quality improvement coefficients influence decision-makers. The results show that the highest quality may not benefit the manufacturer. Investing in or acquiring a low-capable supplier is better than a high-capable supplier under certain conditions. If the gaps between two suppliers’ quality improvement coefficients and the importance of two components are dramatic, the manufacturer should choose an investment strategy.

This study contributes to the complementary supply chain management by comparing two kinds of strategies-acquisition and investment, with a high-capable supplier and a low-capable supplier.

Considers the relationship between the types of targets or benchmarks used and reward structures adopted in two contrasting performance improvement strategies – continuous improvement and radical change. Hypothesises that the process of target setting and the reward structures adopted will be different between the two strategies. The propositions are that organisations involved in continuous improvement of a process will base their performance targets on past performance and internal benchmarking, arrived at through consultation and with a mixture of financial and non‐financial rewards for achieving targets. For processes involving radical change, targets will be based on external benchmarks imposed by senior management, with financial rewards for their achievement. The findings from a semi‐structured questionnaire conducted in 40 UK service organisations reveal that most continuous improvement targets were based on past performance and that processes undergoing radical change made limited use of external benchmarks. In the majority of cases, targets were imposed by managers without consultation, with rewards linked to theachievement of those targets. Financial rewards, particularly financial bonuses, predominated in both improvement strategies. The implications are that the potential benefits of adopting process changes are being constrained. In continuous improvement the lack of participation in target setting could be undermining the team‐based empowerment philosophy of the strategy. The aim of radical change is to achieve a paradigm shift involving revolutionary rather than evolutionary change which is less likely to be fulfilled with targets based on past performance.