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The intent of this empirical research is to identify the critical factors that are potentially “fatal” to productivity improvement programs and to analyze these factors relative to documented quality concepts. From this analysis we determine that these “fatal” factors can be prevented by the pre‐existence of a quality program, specifically total quality management, which requires participative involvement of all members of an organization, continuous improvement, and customer satisfaction.

The steady incline in oil prices combined with the recent credit crisis and downturns in financial markets has driven organizations to re‐evaluate their manufacturing processes and bottom line. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a bottom‐up approach that may be used by firms in planning, managing and forecasting productivity improvements.

A multiple‐case study approach was used: two comprehensive cases and seven short cases were used to illustrate the model.

The lack of understanding of the relationship between productivity, profitability and performance has led to the application of piece‐meal solutions for problems in productivity. Bottom‐up approach in improving productivity will provide better results than top‐down approach.

This paper describes the bottom‐up approach which has been successfully used for managing productivity improvement initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to contextualize a productivity contest between a local manufacturer versus a foreign one, both of whom sell an identical product in the local market, within the two companies' respective economies. The intent is to delineate the conditions under which one firm gains a competitive advantage over the other.

The purchasing power parity model is reformulated to account for differential rates of macroeconomic productivity gain in the two countries. The implications of these differential rates vis‐à‐vis the productivity contest between the local and foreign manufacturer are then explored.

To gain a competitive advantage over its foreign rival, the local firm must achieve a net productivity improvement relative to its (local) economy that surpasses the net productivity improvement of the foreign rival relative to its (foreign) economy. Thus, the local firm stands in a rivalrous relationship not solely with its foreign competitor but also with the average firm in its very own (local) economy and in a complementary relationship with the average firm in the foreign economy. The foregoing is shown to be a generalization of the Dutch disease phenomenon and to imply that national efforts to attain competitive advantage are self‐contradictory.

In its productivity contest with its foreign rival, the local firm's management should not focus myopically on a comparison of the two firms' rates of net productivity improvement. Rather, the focus should be on the two firms' differential rates of net productivity improvement relative to their respective economies.

The main conclusions of this paper, which derive from the effect of productivity changes on exchange rates, are both stark and original. A firm is engaged in a productivity contest with the average firm in its own economy. Thus, national efforts to enhance productivity are counter productive to a firm whose productivity improvement lags behind that of the average domestic firm.

The apparel industry is truly global in nature. Apparel manufacturing being labour intensive has been migrating from the high wage developed world to developing countries. However, the developing countries will need to have efficient manufacturing operations if they are to retain their competitiveness in the apparel industry. This paper attempts to evaluate the productivity levels achieved by Indian apparel manufacturers vis‐à‐vis their counterparts from the rest of the world; to ascertain factors associated with productivity performance; and to recommend strategies for productivity improvement.

Maintaining and improving productivity of product design and engineering processes has been a paramount challenge for design-driven companies, which are characterised a high degree of development of products and processes in order to meet particular customer requirements. Literature on this issue is fragmented and dispersed and a concise and systematic overview is lacking. Hence, it remains unclear, which methods are applicable for design-driven companies to improve the productivity of limitedly available engineering resources (a challenge companies and nations face currently). The purpose of this paper is to develop such a systematic overview.

An unusual approach was utilised by combining the outcomes from a systematic literature review and the results of a Delphi study. From both research approaches complementary and overlapping methods for improving the productivity of product design and engineering processes could be drawn.

The unique systematic overview presents 27 methods to increase the productivity, effectiveness and efficiency of product design and engineering processes of design-driven companies. Moreover, the study finds that methods for improving effectiveness are preferred over methods for improving efficiency and that limitations with regard to the availability of resources are often not considered.

During the development of the systematic overview, a lack of empirical evidence to assess the actual impact of productivity improvement methods was discovered. This shortcoming demonstrates the need for more conceptual and empirical work in this domain. More studies are needed to test and confirm the usefulness of the proposed methods.

Nevertheless, design-driven companies, which struggle to increase the productivity of their product design and engineering processes, can systematically select improvement methods from the overview according to their impact on productivity, effectiveness and efficiency. However, companies should keep in mind, whether effectiveness of product design and engineering can really be increased without considering limitations in engineering resources.

Therefore, the systematic overview provides a valuable map of the unexplored territory of productivity improvement methods for product design and engineering for both practitioners and researchers. For the latter ones, it creates directions for empirical investigations in order to explore and to compare methods for the improvement of productivity of product design and engineering processes.

The primary objective of this paper is to explore how the companies in Turkey plan, manage, carry out and improve their logistics processes and, thus, provide a preliminary analysis to explore the current status of logistics in Turkey. For this purpose, a structured‐disguised survey was conducted with the top 250 firms of Istanbul Chamber of Commerce. The aims were: to specify the organizational, financial and managerial significance of logistics activities; to articulate the sourcing/ purchasing feature, customer service and order processing, to understand the changes in the number of suppliers and customers and to identify the features of activities and tools aimed to improve the quality/productivity in these systems; and to investigate the impact of the general characteristics on the first and second subcriteria for each firm.

This paper aims to shed light on two mechanisms that show how foreign productivity improvement affects domestic welfare.

First, this study applies a general equilibrium model that takes into account how wages respond to productivity improvements. Second, this study uses a monopolistic competition model that shows how benefits or losses from foreign productivity changes are distributed within domestic economy.

First of all, this study shows that a region’s productivity improvement is beneficial for the region itself as well as for its trading partner. Moreover, the study finds that productivity improvement in a developing region is beneficial for the entire economy, benefits all unskilled workers in the economy and skilled workers in the developing region and hurts those in the developing region’s trading partner.

This study contributes to the existing literature in two key aspects. First, the study applies a two-region, two-factor, one-sector general equilibrium model with flexible wages, and second, the study uses a two-region, two-factor, two-sector monopolistic competition model, relaxing the single-factor (labor) assumption, which is used in other works. Under the single-factor assumption, foreign productivity changes do not have any impact on domestic income distribution. In reality, however, any productivity change between countries creates losers and winners within each country. Hence, the author believes that it is imperative to study how benefits or losses that come from foreign productivity changes are distributed between domestic production factors.

Deals with the construction of a strategic framework for improving the productivity of firms. Productivity improvement (PI) has become an important aspect of organizations striving for a major share in international markets. New productivity improvement strategies facilitate an increase in the awareness of PI in present day organizations and help to set‐up an appropriate framework for the management of productivity. Presents a strategic approach for improving productivity and guidelines for establishing productivity measurement criteria.

This article discusses current productivity improvement issues facing organisations in the UK and elsewhere. A brief overview of the UK resource utilisation position in central and local government, industry and commerce is provided. The international perspective is then outlined using examples of successful productivity organisations, productivity campaigns and company productivity improvement programmes taking place outside the UK. The article refocuses on the UK by reporting the findings from a productivity study of 28 private and public sector organisations. In conclusion it is suggested that operations managers and directors, especially in the UK, need to think about productivity improvement as a strategic as well as an operational issue.

With continued emphasis on productivity management and improvement, the Hershey Chocolate Company has grown into a major organisation comprising of seven major production facilities located in the US. In addition, the variety of programmes and systems implemented have involved employees in the development of more effective processes and operations, resulting in a highly efficient workforce.