Manufacturing strategy: Exploring the content and the process

The aim of this article is to explore the content (competitive priorities and strategic decision areas) and the process (pattern of decision making), based on the performance and firm characteristics (size, target market and type). Manufacturing strategy addresses the long-term planning of the production system and the literature has focused on content and few contributions have addressed the simultaneous analysis of these two elements. For this study, an empirical investigation was done by applying a survey in 36 Colombian manufacturing companies. The results showed no significant differences in relation to the analyzed characteristics. However, three clusters of companies were identified according to their performance in competitive priorities. Regarding to the pattern of decision making (top-down, bottom-up, mixed), differences in performance were not identified. © 2015, Centro de Informacion Tecnologica. All rights reserved.