Development of a manufacturing strategy framework for SMEs

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are very important to European industry, acting as suppliers to global companies, but also as OEMs. To keep up with competition from global sourcing, they however need to be pro-active and have clear ideas on how to compete. In this work, manufacturing strategies may constitute the necessary guidance. In this paper we present the development of an analytical tool for manufacturing strategy formulation, easy to use and thus suitable to SMEs, who often lack resources in terms of competence or money.