LINKING MANUFACTURING STRATEGY TO THE DESIGN OF A CUSTOMIZED HYBRID PRODUCTION CONTROL-SYSTEM

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to manufacturing s trategy. Considerable work has been done in defining market-driven com petitive priorities as part of manufacturing strategy and linking them to 'structural' decision areas. Linkage to 'infrastructural' decision areas like Production Control Systems (PCS) is found to be inadequate ly researched. This paper presents a three-staged approach which links manufacturing strategy to PCS. First, the PCS environment is describe d using three dimensions of: competitive priorities, product complexit y and process complexity. The environment defined in the first stage i s then used to select the appropriate level of multi-level 'decision v ariables' which fully define a PCS in Stage 2. In the third stage, the set of selected levels for each of the decision variables, which form the guidelines for detailed PCS design, are then integrated into a hy brid PCS customised to the manufacturing strategy of the firm. This ap proach to PCS design was then tested at several firms and was found to be useful for identifying the inconsistencies between existing PCS an d the manufacturing environment and strategy.