A longitudinal study on manufacturing strategy trade-offs

Fierce competition in today's global markets has forced enterprises to improve their priorities, such as quality, cost, delivery, service and flexibility. The trade-off between these priorities is central to operations strategy research and practice because it forms the foundation of how we conceptualize the improvement process. In this study, we use IMSS databases to determine whether the tradeoff between competitive priorities which Skinner described in his seminal work are still relevant in recent manufacturing environment. Although the majority of firms emphasized that quality is the most important, Findings from three round of IMSS survey indicate that there are scarcely any trade-offs between competitive priorities. But it existed rarely trade-off between cost and quality, cost and service in High-level economy development country firms.