This text proceeds from broad discussion of operations strategy to assessments of specific strategies, to a consideration of how those strategies can best be implemented over time. All sections have a strong general management bias, and almost every case is focused at the Vice President level or above. The text focuses on five interrelated themes ranging from strategic to the tactical, broad perspectives to the details of implementation. All, however, relate to the use of operations as a competitive weapon and the need to view manufacturing as an integrated system rather than an isolated department or function. It develops the concept of operations strategy and discusses its basic elements, emphasizing the need for a fit between operations and business strategies, combines these elements into three different approaches to competition - competing on quality, productivity, and new processes - each requiring careful attention to operations, and explores the planning and implementing of operations strategies over time, including such common challenges as growth and resistance to change.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Manufacturing as a competitive weapon: Indalex Ltd; manufacturing - missing link in corporate strategy; Chandler Home products; Sensormatic Electronic Corporation; Intercom International; the roles and responsibilities of the corporate manufacturing staff; Teradyne - the foundry; how should you organize manufacturing?; FMC, crane and excavator division. Part 2 Strategies and approaches: competing on quality; American food and grains - commodity and ingredient procurement; quest for the best; Steinway and Sons; Sanyo Manufacturing Corporation; a note on quality - the views of Deming, Juran and Crosby; quality on the line competing on productivity; a day at Midwest Equipment; Applichem; why some factories are more productive than others; North American Rockwell Draper division; Allegheny Ludlum Steel Corporation; the case for managing by the numbers; note on the aerospace industry and industrial modernization; Vought Aero products - factory of the future; Corning glass works - the z-glass project competing on new product processes; Allstate chemical company - the commercialization of dynamics; the Rogers Corporation - electrolumnescent lamps; project Nantucket; the Boeing 767 - from concept to production; Lehrer McGovern Boris Inc; a note on value analysis - its history and methodology. Part 3 Planning and implementing operations strategies over time: building on the past; Digital Equipment Corporation - the endpoint model; a note on manufacturing resource planning; Signetics Corporation - implementing a quality improvement programme (A); Signetics Corporation - implementing a quality improvement programme (D); Copeland Corporation - evolution of a manufacturing strategy, 1975-1982; competing through manufacturing.