MEASURING MANUFACTURING COMPETENCE - A FUZZY APPROACH

Over the last decade a large body of literature has pointed out the cr ucial role played by manufacturing in the achievement of the overall g oals of a company. Some authors have attempted to summarise this role by introducing the concept of production competence: it measures a man ufacturer's ability to support and implement a product-market specific business strategy and is calculated on the basis of current manufactu ring performances. Such a measure of production competence can be asso ciated with a short term perspective, as it disregards the future evol ution of manufacturing performance. In fact, in many of today's indust ries, characterised by high turbulence, the current manufacturing perf ormances could not be representative of the future ones and, consequen tly, of the manufacturing's overall ability to support the company's s trategy in the long term. The purpose of this article is twofold: (1) to propose a new framework of production competence (which we will ref er to as manufacturing competence), based on manufacturing critical ca pabilities and infrastructural resources, that considers also the pote ntial of manufacturing for improving the company's performance in the future; and (2) to suggest a consistent measurement framework, derived from the fuzzy sets theory.