The impact of plant size and type of industry on manufacturing competitive priorities

What is it about?

This paper reports and discusses the competitive priorities in two different Kuwaiti industries. It also investigates the impact of plant size and type of industry on these priorities.

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Why is it important?

The current study focus on small country studies through the manufacturing competitive priorities that were espoused by Kuwaiti manufacturers during the past three years. In particular, the study focuses on five selected competitive priorities: quality improvement, on-time delivery, cost reduction, flexibility, and innovativeness. Furthermore, the study investigates the impact of plant size and industrial sector on the level of emphasis on these priorities. In their review of the literature, Dangayach and Deshmukh (2001) concluded that the majority of manufacturing strategy empirical research was conducted in highly industrialized nations with a focus on large world-class firms. Indeed, very few studies focused at operations strategy of small and medium enterprises (See for example: Chen, 1999; Aranda, 2000; and Kathuria, 2000). Kathuria (2000), however, represents the very few empirical studies to address directly the effect of size on firm competitive priorities. Accordingly, the second goal of this study is to verify whether plant size and type of industry have significant impact on its competitive priorities. Specifically, the study investigates and contrasts the level of focus on the five competitive priorities in small, medium and large Kuwaiti plants. Finally, the study explores the level of association between different manufacturing competitive priorities. This allows testing the traditional competitive priorities trade-off model which was frequently argued by early operations strategy researchers (Skinner 1969, 1974; Fine and Hax, 1985; Hayes and Wheelwright, 1984, Richardson et al., 1985; New 1992).

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