TESTING MANUFACTURING STRATEGY FORMULATION PROCESSES

The process of formulating and implementing manufacturing strategy is one of the key tasks for operations managers; however, it is extremely complex and not well understood. Over the years there have been many attempts to both prescribe and describe strategy formulation processes but the literature on the rigorous testing of prescribed processes is sparse. This paper discusses the testing of one such process for form ulating manufacturing strategy, and reports findings. Two aspects are addressed: the initial testing of the process to assess feasibility, u sability and utility; and more detailed testing to investigate factors which affect the implementation of the process. This detailed testing is being carried out as a preliminary step to investigating the tailo ring of the process to different contextual factors. The paper begins by briefly outlining the strategy formulation process which is under t est. This process has been developed in stages since 1987 and has been widely applied in various forms over this period. Having described th e process, the paper then discusses testing problems and presents the rationale behind the testing approach chosen. (C) 1998 Elsevier Scienc e B.V. All rights reserved.