Checklist for development of a manufacturing strategy

1. Appointing a team to manage the strategy development

• Selecting people for the team of strategy management
• Ensuring that each team member has a complete understanding of the following:
• Goals and objectives
• Products and target markets
• Existing manufacturing technologies

2. Understanding the existing market position

• Determining which competitive strategy is the best for the company (cost leadership, differentiation or niche market focus)
• Defining key products in each product family
• Using key product life cycles as a framework to determine the manufacturing requirements of different products
• Measuring the performance of each key product
• Identifying competitive advantage gained from each product family
• Determining the criteria which grant the grea test competitive advantage (e.g. quality, delivery lead time, price, etc.)

3. Identifying factors of change

• Considering business criteria such as product performance, evolution of manufacturing philosophies, market demands, and management structure
• Assessing the level of technological development
• Determining financial pressure
• Examining the staff skills and capabilities to measure the influence
• Analysing external influences
• Identifying a group of factors that has the most influence using SWOT analysis

4. Assessing current product performance

• Applying activity sampling and Pareto analysis techniques to facilitate competitive data collection
• Analysing product performance features such as capital costs, quality, delivery and other
• Assessing product performance against competitive advantage criteria
• Defining performance gaps

5. Determining crucial components

• Placing components on a sequence of high or low business importance
• Adding in the strategic components list the components with a high added value
• Considering the components with a low business content for buying-in
• Describing manufacturing characteristics of the components with a high added value in product families
• Defining the key requirement for manufacture the strategic components

6. Measuring manufacturing operation

• Examining current operations with the following range of criteria:
• Facilities
• Span of processes
• The way processes are organised
• Human resources
• Quality and control
• Manufacturing policies
• Suppliers' network
• Development of new products
• Comparing the strengths and weaknesses of each process with established competitive advantage criteria

7. Developing a new manufacturing strategy

• Identifying the weaknesses of the existing policies basing on the knowledge of:
• Most important product families
• Crucial components
• Competitive advantage criteria
• Existing performance gaps
• Discussing potential actions and choices for a new strategy
• Developing a new strategy ...

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