Aligning Business and Manufacturing Strategies: Theories and Tools

This book focuses on the content and process of aligning business and manufacturing strategies, and the impact of the alignments on firm competitiveness. Based on empirical analyses of 384 companies, I operationalized the alignments on two levels: the macro-level linkages between business objectives and manufacturing missions, and the micro-level linkages between manufacturing missions and action programs. Some of the research findings include: the degree of macro-level alignments is moderated positively by the level of communication between marketing and manufacturing departments of a firm; the macro-level alignments enable the manufacturing function to contribute more to the overall performance of the firm. Based on these findings, a set of practical tools was developed, including a toolbox and two reference tables. These tools were applied to analyzing a real manufacturing company to demonstrate how the alignments between business and manufacturing strategies can be analyzed and improved.