Track: Operations Management

Abstract

Organizations are classified broadly into three distinct groups based on their operating strategy i.e. Cost leaders or defenders, Differentiators or prospectors and Innovators as identified from the existing literature. Cost leaders emphasize on mass production, differentiators produce on order by identifying needs of the customer and in limited lot sizes while innovators bring cutting edge technologies to the market. Modern manufacturing environments are characterized by varied levels of fluctuations and uncertainty. Hence in order to sustain in the current scenario, organizations need to develop flexible strategies with respect to its organizational structure, operations, manufacturing and supply chain activities. In this paper the major manufacturing flexibility dimensions have been identified from the existing literature and are linked with the different strategic groups. Preliminary empirical investigation lends support to our framework.