Manufacturing companies, in searching for new approaches to retain customers, are increasingly using service as a differentiator and as a means of integrating themselves into the customers’ supply chain systems. This study is pivotal in exploring the concept of employing service quality in a...

Discusses marketing strategy of a future steelworks and its product choice by use of a theoretical framework based on the nature of relationship between sellers and customers. Identifies certain key factors which must be incorporated in strategy development to enable competitive strength to the...

Looks at the critical issues facing British Steel as its technological basis develops drastically. Identifies the need to acknowledge the Japanese challenge and develop planning for marketing on an international basis.

Examines the pressures on the German co‐determination system in the context of the introduction of total quality management (TQM) in a German steel company. The case is a particularly interesting research site because the German steel industry is regulated by the most extensive...

This article explores the industrial relations factors associated with the adoption of teamworking and allied new working practices. A survey of trade union representatives in the UK steel industry reveals evidence that managers are less likely to introduce teamworking when they have to...

It is vital that an enterprise establishes the relative performance of its processes within any market sector. As an enterprise measures and monitors the performance of its competitors’ processes vis‐à‐vis their own, the enterprise can be described as initiating a benchmarking study. This...

Illustrates a two‐level hierarchical system structure for solving the production planning problems of a steel manufacturing system. The structure is basically a goal‐diffusion mechanism between two levels. At the lower level a goal programming problem is solved and at the higher level a...

Proposes a method to assess the relative value of organizational human resource (HR) based on total performance. The total performance of the man‐machine resource base of an organization includes its profitability together with how it affects the interests of consumers, the national economy...

Production responsiveness refers to the ability of a production system to achieve its operational goals in the presence of supplier, internal and customer disturbances, where disturbances are those sources of change which occur independently of the system’s intentions. A set of audit tools for...

The paper is the result of an investigation into the pricing practices of large steel manufacturers in the European Community. From mid‐1993 to early 1994, steel prices in the community rose substantially. The unity of purpose displayed in an industry that has high fixed costs and chronic...