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Abstract
The long-term goals of a manufacturing enterprise are to stay in business make profits. To achieve these goals, it is
necessary for these enterprises to understand the business
environment. . The twenty-first century business environment can be characterized by expanding global
competition and customer individualism leading to high-
variety of products which are low in demand. In the 1970s the cost of products usedto be the main lever for obtaining competitive advantage. In the 1980s quality superseded cost
and became an important competitivedimension. Now low
unit-cost and high quality products no longer solely define the, competitive advantage for most manufacturing
enterprises. Today, the customer takes both minimum cost and high quality for grant. Factors .such as delivery
performance, custornization of products and environmental issues such as waste generation are assuming a predominant
role in defini-ng the success of manufacturing enterprises in
terms of increased market share and profitabi I ity. The question is: what can be done under these changing
circumstances to stay in business and retain competitive
advantage?
What is needed is the right manufacturing strategy to
meet the challenges of today’s and future markets. In doing
so, a manufacturing organization not only has to understand
what customers, want, it .also has to develop internal mechanisms to respond to the changes demanded by what
the customer wants.’ This requires a paradigm shin in everything that factories do. That means making use of