Management, myopia and strategy in the manufacturing function: a problem driven research agenda

Byline: Danny Samson, Amrik S. Sohal To manage the manufacturing function and systems effectively, a detailed knowledge of technology hardware is not sufficient. Production managers must understand the business as a whole, and general managers must know enough about the production system to be able to take a strategic view of manufacturing and its contribution to business competitiveness. There are many implications associated with suboptimising in this domain or taking a shortsighted (myopic) view. In examining seven commonly observable 'manufacturing myopia', we argue that most of these can be avoided if the manufacturing function systems and managers are positioned and considered as a high status, 'strategic' part of the organisation. These issues are of major importance to the competitiveness and wealth of firms and of nations, hence there is value in further researching them, and a problem research agenda is outlined.