Linking process choice with plant-level decisions about capital and human resources

We examine how process choice links with design decisions about capital and human resources. Our analysis confirms empirically most expected differenc es between process- and product-focused plants for these decisions. What is unexpected is how top-performing plants resemble other plants within the s ame process choice category in most respects, while distinguishing themselv es on a few selected process attributes. For example. better performing pro cess-focused plants not only achieve higher machine flexibility levels and lower overhead costs as expected, but also have more intensive preventive m aintenance programs. Similarly, product-focused plants that achieve certain hallmarks of process-focused plants also enjoy superior performance.