Taxonomy of Manufacturing Strategies: A Worldwide Perspective

The development of configurations and taxonomies is fundamental to strategy research. This taxonomy of manufacturing strategies is developed with cluster analysis, and is based on the relative importance attached to 11 competitive priorities. From the 2005 International Manufacturing Strategies Survey, 216 plants of 21 countries have been selected as samples and three distinct clusters of manufacturing strategy groups are observed. After comparison, these clusters have been named as Innovator, Caretaker and Allrounder. The two main underlying dimensions along which the manufacturing strategy groups differ are the order fulfillment and order creation and are founded with discriminant analysis. The empirical results offer us a clear panoramic picture of manufacturing strategies around the world.