As the Clinton administration recently released its plan for developing world‐wide information superhighways and making electronic communications a national priority, a growing number of firms have shown increased interest in electronic commerce (EC) as an effective business‐to‐business...

Five hundred financial executives from North American companies were surveyed by means of a mailed questionnaire to gain a view from outside the operations functions of the basis on which aggregate inventory decisions are taken. The response indicated that more functions than might have been...

The contrast between Japanese purchasing practices and US traditional purchasing practices provides a good insight into the relative importance of JIT for US firms. Since the initial implementation of JIT purchasing in late 1980 by Kawasaki Motors (Lincoln plant), at least 50 companies in the US...

The manufacturing strategy literature suggests a number of areas in which decisions are of strategic importance. This study uses a survey of manufacturing executives from 213 business units in the United States to explore empirically the concept of strategic decision categories and improvement...

The problems encountered when attempting to incorporate modern systems for inventory and materials management into a rapidly developing country are discussed. Specifically, the case of present‐day China is used as the focus of the study. After reviewing some historical background for the...

The development and implementation of an integrated production and distribution planning system requires more than the optimal solution of a set of mathematical models. Success is achieved when the organisation addresses both the technical and human issues in planning. The approach followed by a...

Impressed by the remarkable improvement in productivity by Japanese manufacturing companies, many leading American counterparts are implementing their Just‐in‐time (JIT) systems. There are still several key issues to be answered for successful implementation. The results of a field survey on...