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英国巴斯大学留学生战略管理论文定制The manufacturing strategy-capabilities links in mass customisation and agile manufacturing – an exploratory study
Steve Brown
School of Management, University of Bath, Bath, Somerset, UK, and
John Bessant
School of Management, Cranfield University, Cranfield,
Bedfordshire, UK
Keywords Strategic planning, Mass customization, Agile production
Abstract This paper is based on longitudinal case studies of research into strategy formulationwithin six plants from large firms – three inthe car industry and three from the computer industry– that have embarked on mass customisation. The core theme of this paper is that, in spite of theincreasing attention given to manufacturing strategy from the seminal work of Skinner through to
the plethora of articles in recent times, little is mentioned about its application to paradigms ofagility or mass customisation. As a consequence firms attempt to become agile and to pursue masscustomisation without appreciating the contribution of plant-specific manufacturing strategies thatmight enable them to achieve these aspirations. We examine the enablers and strategic blockages inpursuing mass customisation, via a mapping process, and reveal reasons why some firms remainunable to devise and implement manufacturing strategies.
Introduction
This paper is concerned with the links between the role of manufacturingstrategy and the emergent paradigms of agile manufacturing and masscustomisation. Agile manufacturing includes the ability to respond quickly andeffectively to current market demands, as well as being proactive in developingfuture market opportunities. Teece and Pisano (1994) view such capabilities asvital in the modern era, which has been described as one of hyper-competition
(D’Aveni, 1994).
A number of attempts have been made to define agility in various countries– for example, in the USA (Kidd, 1994), Canada (Duguay et al., 1997), and theUK (Burgess, 1994), but there is no firm agreement as to the exact nature of
what constitutes agile manufacturing. However, although proposed definitionsfrom these authors go some way to aid our understanding they do not explorethe role of manufacturing strategy in achieving agility (Bessant et al., 2001;
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The research for this paper was funded by an EPSRC grant (number GR/R26559/0).
Manufacturing
strategy –
capabilities
707
International Journal of Operations &
Production Management
Vol. 23 No. 7, 2003
pp. 707-730
q MCB UP Limited
0144-3577
DOI 10.1108/01443570310481522
Brown, 1998a). Similarly, the literature on key concepts within the agile paradigmsuch as mass customisation is noticeable because of the missing link withmanufacturing strategy (A° hlstro¨m and Westbrook, 1999). To add to the problem,there seems to be no firm agreement as to the definitions for, and majordifferences between, the paradigms of mass customisation and agilemanufacturing. For example, Feitzinger and Lee (1997) in their discussion onmass customisation also include “agile supply networks” as a necessary factor. In
addition, Da Silveira et al. (2001) mention agile manufacturing as a feature withintheir summary on the literature on mass customisation.We suggest that althoughit本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。