An Empirical Study on Manufacturing Strategy Formulation in Turbulent Environment: Dealing with Changes and Uncertainties

In the turbulent environment, how to deal with changes and uncertainties has become the core competence of firms. Many manufacturing systems have been proposed with the capability to deal with changes and uncertainties. Facing with such many kinds of systems, it is difficult to set up the linkage between business strategy and manufacturing systems, which is the mission of manufacturing strategy. Some common approach shared by these systems are concluded, and the linkage is built based on the common approach. An empirical study was executed in Chinese manufacturing industry with a questionnaire linking with uncertainty. The common approach and change sources were empirically tested with Principal component analysis (PCA), and the relationships between the sources of change and the common approach were examined with regression correlation. The results found some significant relationships which can give suggestion on the strategic formulation of manufacturing strategy in the turbulent environment.

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