Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between management education, the performance of German engineering enterprises and the strategic knowledge status of the executives running those enterprises. Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based upon the results...

The study of manufacturing strategy has now become established. But what about the shopfloor where it is supposed to be implemented? How well is this understood? This article follows through the strategy logic and then creates a complementary model for understanding the working of the shopfloor...

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...

Proposes a framework for considering the factors relevant to the design of manufacturing strategy processes. The framework is built from manufacturing and business strategy literature through a review which positions popular strategies like Cellular manufacturing, TQM and JIT within more...

The post‐Second World War era has seen the emergence of two strategies to improve the operational effectiveness of manufacturing firms: just‐in‐time (JIT) production systems and total quality management (TQM). Both evolved in Japan, and the West deciphered and applied them later. TQM has...

A substantial number of propositions have been made over the last 20 years regarding the content of manufacturing strategy and the process of strategy development and implementation. Although many of the propositions have been well received, few have been rigorously tested via empirical methods....

Claims that failure to integrate productivity in total quality management (TQM) projects leads to ineffectiveness in management of manufacturing systems. Establishes a generalized manufacturing systems model based on the analysis of the results of literature and industrial surveys. Explores the...

Companies measuring by “traditional” internally focused control measures have been found to be lagging through concentrating on efficiency rather than the causes of loss of control. It is argued here that those with more dynamic external focus, in which the role of production managers is...

There is a need for a unified theory of the strategic management of manufacturing. Current theory encourages the strategic management of manufacturing by seeking to match the use of production resources with the need to satisfy the order winning criteria of the target markets. Such an approach...