Manufacturing responsiveness as a competitive advantage and implementation in a make-to-order environment

Many companies have been successful differentiating themselves and creating growth opportunities by developing a competitive advantage through their manufacturing operations. During the last century, this operational advantage has generally included economies of scale and the persistent pursuit of lower direct costs. However, this thesis contends that a cost focused manufacturing organization encourages decisions that in the long run make the organization rigid, inflexible and unable to implement innovations the market desires. Not unexpectedly, those companies that fail to recognize and incorporate changing market demands are relegated to reading about their competitor's successes in newspapers and journals. This thesis further presents an argument to shift the manufacturing organization's operational focus away from cost and towards time. More specifically, this thesis posits that firms should persistently pursue a reduction in the time required to manufacture a customer's order from receipt to shipment.

Department dc:contributor.department

Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Smith, Jason M. (Jason Michael)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Roy E. Welsch.

• Sloan School of Management.
• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
• Leaders for Manufacturing Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34864

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34864