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The purpose of this paper is to develop and justify a theoretical framework for analyzing the relationship between manufacturing strategy, business strategy, time-based manufacturing competence, capability and competitiveness and their impact on firm performance for firms operating in the manufacturing sector. Many executives and scholars have argued that time is an important component for developing a brilliant strategy to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage for the firm.

This paper provides a theoretical framework primarily concerned with the relationship between time-based manufacturing competence, competitive priorities and firm performance. The framework suggests that firms focusing on time as a strategic factor at both strategic levels – business strategy and manufacturing strategy – can achieve a multi-competitive advantage, and, in turn, high performance.

To realize the level of performance associated with time-based manufacturing competence, it is essential for firms to identify the areas in which time can be reduced. These include reduction in design lead time, product concept to production; time-based competition for product-to-market firms; time-based manufacturing competence; product development activities; fast-to-product; and customer service.

This article provides a theoretical framework for linking manufacturing strategy to business strategy and performance to help expand the body of knowledge for other researchers to follow.

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.

Seeks to contribute to the empirical database on the progression of thinking with regards to the strategic role of manufacturing by reporting some results of a study on the manufacturing‐strategy thinking and practices amongst practising managers of operations based in a newly industrialized economy (NIE). In particular, highlights the finding that while almost all operations managers in the sample perceive that manufacturing can and should contribute to overall corporate strategy, their view of the role of manufacturing is that it should primarily be reactive vis‐à‐vis other functional areas; such a view is far from strategic. Operations managers in the survey agree that there are many ways to compete besides cost, but their main criterion for evaluating the manufacturing function is still cost and productivity. They seem to fail to recognize the existence of tradeoffs in the production system. They acknowledge the necessity to handle strategic issues, but still perceive infrastructural decisions as mere operational decisions. While the role of managers in NIEs is likely to be more cost focused rather than strategic in orientation, they need to be better and further exposed to the current concepts of manufacturing strategy thinking and development. In particular, a more proactive form of the strategic role of manufacturing could be pursued.

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.

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.

This article investigates the relationship between the functional areas of manufacturing and human resources by analysing the practices of human resource management associated with the competitive priorities of manufacturing strategy, e.g. quality, delivery performance, flexibility and cost. Within strategic business management, both the competitive priorities of manufacturing and the practices of human resource management need to be observed by the whole organisation. In this way, this study presents how human resource management practices are aligned to business strategies based on cost reduction, quality, delivery performance and product innovation. These practices may also be arranged in different ways in a particular competitive strategy.

Details the findings of a search for manufacturing “strategic groups” in the engineering industry, that is a set of firms competing within an industry on the basis of similar combinations of business scope and resource commitments. The research methodology used was to adopt stockturns (excluding work in process), as a measure of manufacturing scope. Manufacturing throughput efficiency was selected as a measure of production engineering resource commitment. An initial grouping of companies was accomplished by using these two manufacturing performance variables. Comparisons were then made of the manufacturing practices and performances of the firms in the four strategic groups that were formed. The results show statistically significant differences in the performance of each of the strategic groups formed. They can also serve as benchmarks for the evaluation of manufacturing management performance. The proposed manufacturing strategy and performance matrix provides a practical framework for strategic planning.

Benchmarking to improve strategic manufacturing management seems to be a logical extension to benchmarking to improve operating system performance. This assumption is, however, untested. The research objective for this study was to learn how to benchmark the strategic manufacturing management process. The experiences of a consortium of non‐competing firms struggling with the problems of benchmarking implementation constitute the base data for this research. The study has found that inappropriate choices of key manufacturing performance indicators were made by 50 per cent of the business units studied and this is because of poor strategic vision for manufacturing operations. Also evidence was found to show that 70 per cent of the firms studied needed a better understanding of their own processes before they could benefit from benchmarking other organizations.

The role of industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies for organizations to achieve a competitive advantage and mitigate disruptive emergency situations are well exhibited in literature. However, more light needs to be thrown into implementing I4.0 technologies to digitally transform organizations. This paper introduces a novel framework for formulating manufacturing strategy 4.0 (MS 4.0) that guides organizations to implement I4.0 successfully.

The experts working in I4.0 and technology management domains were interviewed to determine the definition, role and process for formulating MS 4.0. Text mining using VOSViewer© is performed on the experts' opinions to determine the key terms from the opinions through keyword analysis. The identified key terms are mapped together using the existing traditional manufacturing strategy formulation framework to develop the MS 4.0 framework. Finally, the proposed MS 4.0 framework is validated through a triangulation approach.

This study captured the role, definition and process to formulate MS 4.0 and proposed a framework to help practitioners implement I4.0 at manufacturing organizations to achieve competitiveness during normal and emergency situations.

The proposed MS 4.0 framework can assist industry practitioners in formulating the strategy for implementing the I4.0 technology/gies to digitally transform their manufacturing firm to retain the maximum manufacturing output and become market competent in normal and emergency situations.

This study is the first of its kind in the body of knowledge to formulate a digital transformation strategy, i.e. MS 4.0, to implement I4.0 technologies through a manufacturing strategic lens.