Correspondence between manufacturing strategy paradigms and Wheelwright and Hayes model: Two case studies

Competence in manufacturing can be assessed in dimensions such as cost, quality, delivery speed, delivery reliability, flexibility and innovation. Manufacturing strategy literature refers to three paradigms of competence building in manufacturing namely, trade-off, cumulative and integrative. It is likely that companies depending upon their strategic orientation use different approaches of competency building. A widely accepted four-stage model due to Wheelwright and Hayes (W-H) provides basis for assessing strategic role of manufacturing. This paper conducts an exploratory study using cases of two firms to investigate the correspondence between approaches of competency building and stages of W-H model.