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The purpose of this paper is to find the driving factors for effective and efficient management of international manufacturing network (IMN) which has become increasingly important due to the intensive competition existing in the manufacturing industry. This paper presents a magnified view of different constructs of IMN and identifies the qualitative factors which are broadly classified under different constructs like political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental.

Principal component analysis is applied to club identified factors into political, economic, social, technological and legal categories. PESTLE–SWOT approach is used to shortlist the identified factors using the elimination algorithm. Using analytical hierarchy process, weightages and rank of the identified factors are evaluated. Interpretive structural modeling is applied to understand inter-relationship among factors, and to analyze the driving power and dependence of the factors.

The results obtained from the above approaches are compared to identify most significant factors and the list of IMN enablers is presented using Venn Diagram. Government stability, Economic freedom, economic stability, environmental sustainability and raw material availability are coming out to be the driving factors across all techniques. Finally, the paper provides weights of the driving indicators common across all multi-criteria decision-making techniques considered.

The proposed work provides significant information about the qualitative factors needed to be considered while designing and developing IMN. As identified by literature review and through expert opinions, not all 29 factors responsible for IMN development are crucial. Many factors are either interdependent or driven by others. The paper provides a useful analysis about the driving factors that need to be taken into account.

The study presents a comprehensive analysis of the IMN enablers. Furthermore, it provides managerial and theoretical implications to deal with the complexities encountered while establishing IMN.

The article discusses the characteristics of the future industrial company, the so‐called interactive firm, and the challenges awaiting it down the road. To this end, a framework for the strategic positioning of tomorrow's industrial company is proposed.

In order to illustrate that the interactive firm may take on different forms, three archetypal, future‐oriented firms have been identified and tested in a panel of industrial managers to flesh out this framework.

The article provides a detailed picture of the strategic roles and functioning of the interactive firm.

Individual firms may use the framework as a guide to position themselves in the industrial climate of the future. The framework also includes five different strategic production roles that an industrial firm should consider.

The value of the article is that it triggers both scholars and practitioners to study and consider different forms as well as key characteristics of the industrial enterprise of the future.

The challenges facing industrial enterprises include coping with an increased distribution of activities and the related need to deal with task interdependencies, as well as coping with uncertainty and complexity. This opens for a discussion of current thinking and practices of manufacturing and its strategic role. The aim of the paper is to explore future changes in strategic roles of manufacturing.

A review of the literature on manufacturing strategy has focused on different ways of positioning manufacturing as a means for identifying and defining the strategic roles of manufacturing in an industrial company. To understand how industrial companies have dealt with some of the global challenges and have changed their strategic roles of manufacturing over a period of 3‐7 years, interviews are carried out in six small and medium‐sized companies, representing different industries, such as textile, mechanical and electronic industries. The case stories form a basis for identifying issues for future manufacturing strategic roles in the form of research propositions and implications.

The literature review has resulted in a grouping of the strategic roles of manufacturing. The first group of contributions relates directly to the extent and selected objectives of manufacturing contribution to competitive advantage. The second group positions a company in a value chain or a supply chain. The third way of classifying strategic roles focuses on the mutual interplay between functions leading to a primary role and four supporting roles. The fourth classification identifies different roles that a plant can play in a network of manufacturing plants of a company. To a large extent, the groups are mutually exclusive which suggests that an industrial company may use several classifications to find a configuration of strategic manufacturing roles that is in line with the environmental challenges and internal strength. The empirical findings form a basis for developing research propositions about the roles of manufacturing in the future: an important issue for an industrial firm will be to combine the various typologies into a configuration of strategic manufacturing roles; the strategic roles of manufacturing supporting other functions will become increasingly important, emphasizing the importance of strengthening the interplay with other functions and development of holistic competencies and knowledge sharing across functions and disciplines; a company's development over the next years may be seen as a sequence of moves similar to a game of chess, suggesting a capability to develop scenarios for the next series of moves.

The paper suggests that management of industrial companies: develops a combination of classifications of manufacturing roles appropriate for the company's specific situation; identifies supportive strategic roles of manufacturing leading to explicit focus on the interplay with other functions and strengthening of holistic competencies and knowledge sharing across functions and disciplines; views the pursuit of a global manufacturing strategy as a series of adaptive moves, instead of a once‐for‐all decision.

The findings open for a discussion of current thinking and practice of manufacturing and its strategic roles pointing to a new perception of manufacturing and to future challenges and development patterns.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the experiences from a number of two‐day courses in fundamentals of supply chain management completed for about 200 employees in a case company. The courses were held in order to increase the organisation's competency level and by this prepare people for changes. The paper aims to test whether this course has had an effect on the implementation process and participants taking part in the course.

Applies two sets of questionnaires. The first questionnaire consists of evaluation sheets that were handed out to the participants and filled out at the end of each course. The second questionnaire was distributed by e‐mail to the participants of the completed courses.

Provides evidence for the possibility to construct and complete a supply chain course that could increase competency level and change readiness.

It takes time to obtain a common understanding of technical terms, concepts and the mechanisms for running supply chains efficiently. The involving part for such a course construction is the most important element.

There is little in the literature about how companies approach changes in global supply chains from a change management and competence perspective.

Just‐in‐time (JIT) retailers replenish continuously according to the consumer demand. Under unpredictable and seasonal consumer demand, it is essential to coordinate planning and responsiveness with the manufacturers. The purpose of this paper is to study the coordination journey between a toy manufacturer and a JIT retailer, and generates several theoretical propositions on coordination process, behaviours and strategies.

A one‐year case study to describe the unfolding coordination process between the toy manufacturer and JIT retailer. Rich case data is collected because the researcher is one of the manufacturer's project team members.

The coordination process followed some generic sequential stages – evaluating, deriving, offering, assessing and implementing of coordination strategies. Furthermore, the physical flow behaviours and the ordering behaviours are found interactively influencing each other. Especially, the speculative and risk‐averse ordering behaviours have created cyclical excess inventory and low shelf‐availability. Under such uncertain conditions, two counter‐productive coordination strategies were implemented. The two parties later realized several effective coordination strategies – accurate response, differentiated responsive, and coordinated responsive. Moreover, the responsiveness of the manufacturer was actually affected by the order behaviours of all other retailers.

There is generalizable limitation to generate theoretical propositions based only one case study on a dyadic toy supply chain.

Low‐responsive supply for unpredictable and seasonal demand leads to irrational ordering and coordination behaviours, which create mismatch of supply and demand. This paper studies an alternate strategy – the JIT retailing. It includes the problems of coordination behaviours, some observed effective coordination process and strategies.

The work presented in this article is part of an action research project carried out in collaboration between Bang & Olufsen (B&O) and the Center for Industrial Production (CIP) of Aalborg University. The aim of the project is to investigate how end‐manufacturers can source new technology via innovative NPD‐related supplier relationships. Whereas prior work on buyer‐supplier relationships is dominated by a product‐oriented view, the present research has adopted a resource‐based (competence) view to develop a framework to guide companies in developing and handling competence‐based relationships with technology suppliers. The framework suggests four different types of inter‐organisational competence development, two of which will be illustrated using empirical data obtained through two in‐depth case studies of innovative partnership projects between B&O and some of its sub‐suppliers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine, and present a comprehensive review of, the existing literature on the international manufacturing network (IMN).

The original data set used for reviewing the IMN literature consisted of 107 articles selected from 21 journals: more specifically, 40 articles are concerned with plant-level analysis, and 67 articles are related to IMN-level analysis. The literature is simultaneously reviewed by two researchers. The relevance and contribution of each reviewed paper is discussed and mutually agreed upon.

The paper highlights the different concepts related to IMN and traces the evolution of IMN-related research. Based on two levels of analysis (i.e. plant and network), this paper further reviews and discusses the IMN-specific literature in detail to determine the number of IMN articles published across the journals, the dominant methodologies employed, and the research focus reflected in IMN studies. A research trajectory is finally developed to provide an integrated and intuitional view on the development of IMN research.

This is the first effort that has been made towards thoroughly investigating the existing literature on IMN, aiming to trace different concepts related to IMN from a historical perspective, to review and discuss the IMN-specific literature in detail, to provide an overview of the evolution trajectory of different existing IMN research themes, and to propose future research directions. Keeping in mind the growing importance of IMN for practitioners as well as the academic community, this study provides a timely overview of existing and emerging IMN research themes.

This paper introduces an empirical application of an experimental model for knowledge management within an organization, namely a case‐based reasoning model for manufacturing vision development (CBRM). The model integrates the development process of manufacturing vision with the methodology of case‐based reasoning. This paper briefly describes the model's theoretical fundamentals and its conceptual structure; conducts a detailed introduction of the critical elements within the model; exhibits a real world application of the model; and summarizes the review of the model through academia and practice. Finds that the CBRM is supportive to the decision‐making process of applying and augmenting organizational knowledge. It provides a new angle to tackle strategic management issues within the manufacturing system of a business operation. Explores a new proposition within strategic manufacturing management by enriching and extending the concept of MV while trying to lead the CBR methodology into a new domain by applying it in strategic management.