An Exploratory study into the manufacturing strategies in the Turkish machine manufacturing industry

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1064275 (Table of Contents)

This study has been accomplished to determine the current status of the machine manufacturing industry in Turkey to evaluate different manufacturing strategies employed by the companies operating in that industry. The study is based on data from a joint project of Machine Manufacturer's Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association (TÜSİAD) and Sabancı University. The data is obtained from a survey targeting all the members of MIB. There are three basic components comprising a manufacturing strategy. There are competitive priorities, that enable the differentiation of the firm from its competitors; manufacturing objectives consistent with the competitive priorities; and action plans for supporting the manufacturing objectives and thus the competitve priorities at the operational level. The companies participatin in the survey have evaluated 15 competitive priorities, 16 manufacturing objecives and 35 action plans on a 1-5 Likert scale. Competitive priorities and manufacturing objectives have been evaluated with respect to their relative importance for the company for the next two years. Action plans have been evaluated through two questions: one asking for the assesment of the companies concerning the emphasis they have placed on the action plans within the past two years and the other asking about the ranking of the most important 7 action plans for the next two years. The variables representing these components of the manufacturing strategy are grouped using factor analysis for each component. Competitive priorities are grouped into 4 factors, manufacturing objectives into 5 factors and action plans into 6 factors. For the first two components, companies are grouped into clusters according to their responses to the same questions. Differences between company clusters within a component are explored using multivariate data analysis techniques. Mean scores of the questions in a particular component are used to determine a statistically significant difference between company groups. Different company groups spplying different manufacturing strategies have been defined. To asses whether companies'selection of manufacturing objectives are consistent with their competitive priorities, clusters achieved by analyzing competitve priorities are fixed and manufacturing objectives are used to determine the differences between these clusters. Results indicate to a certain level of consistency.