IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/proeco/v112y2008i2p646-654.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How to organise operations: Focusing or splitting?

Author

Listed:
  • Hill, Alex

Abstract

The concept of focus has been proposed as a method for operations to achieve superior performance by concentrating its resources on accomplishing one strategic task. Since its development by Skinner [1974. The focused factory. Harvard Business Review May-June, 113-121], it has become a key element within the operations strategy field. Despite the high level of adoption and investigation into the subject, there still seems to be little empirical support for the focus concept [Vokurka, R.J., Davis, R.A., 2000. Focused factories: empirical study of structural and performance differences. Production and Inventory Management Journal 41(1), 44-55] and a feeling that we still do not adequately understand its application in industry [Ketokivi, M., Jokinen, M., 2006. Strategy, uncertainty and the focused factory in international process manufacturing. Journal of Operations Management 24(3), 250-270]. This case-study-based research paper examines three organisations, that have organised their operations using four different approaches, to understand the advantages and disadvantages they bring. The findings show that some approaches (process and product/market) do not fully reduce the level of complexity within operations, whilst others do (market order-winner and qualifier/performance objectives). It is therefore proposed that some approaches should be re-classified as "splitting" rather than "focusing."

Suggested Citation

  • Hill, Alex, 2008. "How to organise operations: Focusing or splitting?," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 646-654, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:proeco:v:112:y:2008:i:2:p:646-654
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925-5273(07)00235-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. van der Vaart, Taco & Wijngaard, Jacob, 2007. "The contribution of focus in collaborative planning for make-to-order production situation with large set-up times," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1-2), pages 436-443, July.
    2. Shafer, Scott M. & Oswald, Sharon L., 1996. "Product-focused manufacturing for strategic advantage," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 24-29.
    3. M. Hossein Safizadeh & Larry P. Ritzman & Deven Sharma & Craig Wood, 1996. "An Empirical Analysis of the Product-Process Matrix," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(11), pages 1576-1591, November.
    4. Jeffrey G. Miller & Aleda V. Roth, 1994. "A Taxonomy of Manufacturing Strategies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(3), pages 285-304, March.
    5. Thomas Brush & Aneel Karnani, 1996. "Impact of Plant Size and Focus on Productivity: An Empirical Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(7), pages 1065-1081, July.
    6. van der Vaart, Taco & van Donk, Dirk Pieter, 2004. "Buyer focus: Evaluation of a new concept for supply chain integration," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 21-30, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tachizawa, Elcio M. & Gimenez, Cristina, 2010. "Supply flexibility strategies in Spanish firms: Results from a survey," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(1), pages 214-224, March.
    2. Hallgren, Mattias & Olhager, Jan, 2006. "Quantification in manufacturing strategy: A methodology and illustration," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(1), pages 113-124, November.
    3. Paul S. Adler & Barbara Goldoftas & David I. Levine, 1999. "Flexibility Versus Efficiency? A Case Study of Model Changeovers in the Toyota Production System," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 10(1), pages 43-68, February.
    4. Kathuria, Ravi & Anandarajan, Murugan & Igbaria, Magid, 1999. "Selecting IT applications in manufacturing: a KBS approach," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 605-616, December.
    5. Jonsson, Patrik, 2008. "Exploring problems related to the materials planning user environment," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(1), pages 383-400, May.
    6. Elcio Mendonça Tachizawa & Cristina Giménez, 2005. "Drivers and sources of supply flexibility: An exploratory study," Economics Working Papers 889, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    7. Rebolledo, Claudia & Jobin, Marie-Hélène, 2013. "Manufacturing and supply alignment: Are different manufacturing strategies linked to different purchasing practices?," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 219-226.
    8. Demeter, Krisztina & Szász, Levente, 2013. "Towards solution based thinking: characteristics of servitization at Hungarian manufacturing companies," Journal of East European Management Studies, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, vol. 18(3), pages 309-335.
    9. Aleksandras Vytautas Rutkauskas & Aleksandr Ostapenko, 2016. "Return, reliability and risk as a proactive set of concepts in developing an efficient integration strategy of companies," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(2), pages 201-214, April.
    10. Furlan, Andrea & Dal Pont, Giorgia & Vinelli, Andrea, 2011. "On the complementarity between internal and external just-in-time bundles to build and sustain high performance manufacturing," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(2), pages 489-495, October.
    11. Spanos, Yiannis E. & Voudouris, Irini, 2009. "Antecedents and trajectories of AMT adoption: The case of Greek manufacturing SMEs," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 144-155, February.
    12. Heim, Gregory R. & Sinha, Kingshuk K., 1999. "Design And Delivery Of Electronic Services: Implications For Customer Value In Electronic Food Retailing," Working Papers 14341, University of Minnesota, The Food Industry Center.
    13. Hamblin, David & Iyer, Arun, 1996. "What difference does your industry make?," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2-3), pages 155-174, June.
    14. Naim, Mohamed M. & Gosling, Jonathan, 2011. "On leanness, agility and leagile supply chains," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 342-354, May.
    15. Pinjala, Srinivas Kumar & Pintelon, Liliane & Vereecke, Ann, 2006. "An empirical investigation on the relationship between business and maintenance strategies," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(1), pages 214-229, November.
    16. Kumar, Mukesh & Tsolakis, Naoum & Agarwal, Anshul & Srai, Jagjit Singh, 2020. "Developing distributed manufacturing strategies from the perspective of a product-process matrix," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 219(C), pages 1-17.
    17. Soojung Oh & Young U. Ryu & Hongsuk Yang, 2019. "Interaction effects between supply chain capabilities and information technology on firm performance," Information Technology and Management, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 91-106, June.
    18. Pätäri, Satu & Puumalainen, Kaisu & Jantunen, Ari & Sandstrüm, Jaana, 2011. "The interface of the energy and forest sectors--Potential players in the bioenergy business," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 322-332, May.
    19. Hung M. Nguyen & George Onofrei & Dothang Truong & Simon Lockrey, 2020. "Customer green orientation and process innovation alignment: A configuration approach in the global manufacturing industry," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(6), pages 2498-2513, September.
    20. Erik Brynjolfsson & Wang Jin & Kristina McElheran, 2021. "The power of prediction: predictive analytics, workplace complements, and business performance," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 56(4), pages 217-239, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:proeco:v:112:y:2008:i:2:p:646-654. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.