Search results

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different manufacturing technologies are bundled together and how these bundles influence operations performance and, indirectly, business performance. With the emergence of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies, manufacturing companies can use a wide variety of advanced manufacturing technologies (AMT) to build an efficient and effective production system. Nevertheless, the literature offers little guidance on how these technologies, including novel I4.0 technologies, should be combined in practice and how these combinations might have a different impact on performance.

Using a survey study of 165 manufacturing plants from 11 different countries, we use factor analysis to empirically derive three distinct manufacturing technology bundles and structural equation modeling to quantify their relationship with operations and business performance.

Our findings support an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary perspective. I4.0 technologies build on traditional manufacturing technologies and do not constitute a separate direction that would point towards a fundamental digital transformation of companies within our sample. Performance effects are rather weak: out of the three technology bundles identified, only “automation and robotization” have a positive influence on cost efficiency, while “base technologies” and “data-enabled technologies” do not offer a competitive advantage, neither in terms of cost nor in terms of differentiation. Furthermore, while the business performance impact is positive, it is quite weak, suggesting that financial returns on technology investments might require longer time periods.

Relying on a complementarity approach, our research offers a novel perspective on technology implementation in the I4.0 era by investigating novel and traditional manufacturing technologies together.

Taking its outset in operations management (OM) contingency research, this paper aims to investigate how firm size, as one of the most powerful explanatory factors, influences the implementation and performance impact of four key manufacturing practices.

Three large-scale surveys from three different points in time, with a total of 1880 observations from varied geographical regions, are used to offer generalizable evidence on how firm size influences the implementation and performance outcome of technology, lean, quality and human resource practices.

The four manufacturing practices positively enhance performance: quality and lean practices produce the most consistent effects, while technology and human resource practices turn more beneficial in the latest sample. Furthermore, the authors offer robust support for the selection and mediation models (larger firms generally invest more in the four practices and, through that, achieve higher performance), while finding no evidence for the moderation model (smaller firms can equally benefit if they possess the resources to invest in these practices).

As manufacturing practices are continuously evolving, their performance impact cannot be guaranteed in any context. Size is a frequently used contingency variable in OM studies, but results are contradictory in terms of its impact on the implementation and performance outcomes of manufacturing practices. This study manages to ease these contradictions.

Following the identified need for more explicit contextual studies in servitization research, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between and among economic context, service provision and service return, including the service paradox.

Firm-level and macroeconomic (country competitiveness) data are combined to operationalize the constructs considered in the study. Structural equation modeling and cluster analysis are used to investigate the direct relationships between economic context, service provision and service return, and the negative association between the development of economic context and the service paradox.

The analyses confirm the general assumption that service provision has a positive direct effect on service return. Economic context seems to have no direct effect on service return and, contrary to what was expected, it has a negative impact on the intensity of service provision. Thus, service provision fully mediates the negative impact of context on service return. Finally, the service paradox occurs more frequently in less-developed economic contexts, where the probability of a relatively low service return coupled with high service provision is significantly higher.

The study identifies five key elements of economic context that have to be incorporated into the strategic decision-making process regarding product-related services offered by manufacturers.

The paper contributes to the contextual research of services offered by manufacturers. Subject to future empirical testing, it is proposed that a more favorable economic context offers more possibilities for manufacturers to cooperate with other business actors to provide services.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature and offer a more generalizable empirical investigation on the performance impact of implementing Industry 4.0, and the way important contingency factors (plant size, multinational status, country context) affect implementation efforts.

Following a systematic literature review, the empirical research is based on a large-scale survey of 705 manufacturing plants from 22 countries. Structural equation modeling is employed to discover the relationships between the main constructs of interest, complemented with subgroup analyses to offer a more detailed understanding of the main effects.

We provide evidence that technologies enabling Industry 4.0 have a positive impact on operational performance, including cost, quality, delivery and flexibility performance. Results of the analyses further indicate that (1) larger firms invest more in implementing Industry 4.0 technologies, (2) manufacturing firms in less competitive countries, especially in the South-East Asian region invest significantly more effort than competitive countries, while (3) multinational companies have no advantage over local firms.

The survey data employed in this study refers to the early years of companies embracing Industry 4.0 solutions, and thus does not contain the most recent advances in manufacturing technologies.

The paper represents one of the first studies in the literature to assess on a large-scale survey the performance impact of Industry 4.0 technologies, as well as the main contingency factors affecting the implementation of these technologies.

Many firms today operate international manufacturing networks (IMN) of plants, which may serve different purposes and have different levels of competences. This diversity influences the effectiveness of different manufacturing practices, which has not yet been explored in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between plant role and the “goodness” of its manufacturing practices.

Data are used from a sample of 471 plants from the sixth edition of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey.

The findings show that plants with higher competences use more practices successfully than less competent plants. Furthermore, more competent plants tend to strengthen their differentiation performance, while less competent plants focus on and achieve cost performance improvements instead.

The associations between plant role, manufacturing practices and performance provide important input for the global design of a firm’s IMN as a whole, and the development of local plants within the network.

The “goodness” of manufacturing practices has not been investigated in the plant role literature; the effect of plant role on the “goodness” of manufacturing practices has not been studied in the OM contingency literature. This paper shows that while the role of a plant in a firm’s IMN hardly affects the efforts it puts into implementing different manufacturing practices, it has an important moderating influence on the performance implications of these practices.

As a response to the increased frequency of disruptive events and intense competition, organizational agility has become a key concept in organizational research. Fostering organizational agility requires leveraging knowledge that exists both outside (exploration) and inside (exploitation) the organization. This research tests the so-called ambidexterity hypothesis, which claims that a balance between exploration and exploitation leads to increased organizational outcomes, including the development of organizational agility. Complementing previously established measurement models on ambidexterity, this research proposes an alternative measurement model to analyze how ambidexterity can enhance organizational agility and, indirectly, performance, taking into consideration the moderating effect of environmental competitiveness.

A review of existing measurement models for ambidexterity shows that tension, a crucial aspect of ambidexterity, is often neglected. The authors, therefore, develop a new measurement model of ambidexterity to incorporate ambidexterity-induced tension. Using this measurement model, they examine the effect of ambidexterity on the development of entrepreneurial and adaptive agility as well as performance.

Ambidexterity positively influences both entrepreneurial and adaptive agility, indicating that a balance between exploration and exploitation has superior organizational effects. This finding confirms the ambidexterity hypothesis with respect to organizational agility. Furthermore, both entrepreneurial and adaptive agility drive organizational performance. These two indirect effects via agility fully mediate the impact of ambidexterity on organizational performance. Finally, environmental competitiveness positively moderates the relationship between ambidexterity and adaptive agility.

The findings extend research on ambidexterity by showing its positive effects on organizational agility. Furthermore, the study proposes an alternative operationalization to capture the ambidexterity construct that may lay the groundwork for further applications of the ambidexterity concept.

The purpose of this paper is to seek remedy to two major flaws of the production competence literature, which concern: the way the production competence construct is operationalized and the way its effects on performance are measured.

The paper proposes to measure production competence as the two-dimensional operational level construct it actually is, and to use Slack’s (1994) importance-performance matrix to study its business level performance effects. The three hypotheses developed are tested using a subsample of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey database, which includes 465 manufacturing companies from 21 countries.

The study offers additional empirical support for production competence theory. Going beyond supporting existing theory, the results give more detailed insight by indicating that low operational performance on even one important competitive factor leads to lower business performance (order-losing effect); excessive investment in increasing operational performance on any less important competitive factor does not necessarily lead to higher business performance.

Using a large empirical dataset, the study shows that the importance-performance matrix is a useful tool for decision makers to assess and improve their company’s manufacturing strategy: it indicates how to prioritize between improvement efforts to positively contribute to business performance.

The paper offers a novel approach to operationalize production competence. The importance-performance analysis approach adopted in this study avoids the two major drawbacks of previous production competence studies and offers an appropriate method to assess the impact of production competence on business performance.

The purpose of this paper is to offer deeper insight into the relationship between a subsidiary’s internal integration in its manufacturing network and subsidiary-level operational performance by taking into account the country context of the respective subsidiary.

Subsidiary-level information is gathered using the sixth round of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey, thus including 507 subsidiaries from 22 countries. Country context is operationalised using the Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum.

The findings reveal that internal integration has a positive influence on operational performance improvement. Country context acts as a moderator on this relationship: subsidiaries in less developed countries are only able to improve their effectiveness (quality, flexibility, delivery), while developed country subsidiaries gain both effectiveness and efficiency (cost, time) benefits from internal integration.

The unit of analysis is the knowledge-receiving subsidiary without taking the characteristics of the sending unit or that of the whole network of subsidiaries into account. Based on the context-dependency of the integration-performance relationship found in this paper, a future research agenda is proposed including further factors (absorptive capacity, knowledge complementarity, organisational practices) that could influence this relationship.

Subsidiary managers in less developed countries should strive to acquire intra-network knowledge related to effectiveness, while managers in developed countries can expect both efficiency and effectiveness benefits.

A large-scale survey encompassing subsidiaries from both emerging and developed countries is used to offer deeper insight into the relationship between internal integration and performance. The paper provides a possible explanation for previous mixed findings on this relationship. The differentiation between efficiency and effectiveness performance shows that country context represents an important factor that moderates the integration-performance relationship.