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Operations Strategy<br />

Dr. Dinesh Likhi,<br />

Director (Production and Marketing) and Member, Board, in Mishra Dhatu<br />

Nigam Limited<br />

Strategic Framework For<br />

Manufacturing<br />

A company needs a ‘strategy’ that specifies<br />

the kind of competitive advantage it seeks in<br />

its market place and articulates how it shall<br />

be achieved. In today’s changing,<br />

challenging and competitive world, it is not<br />

enough for a company to have its goal to be<br />

as good as that of its toughest competitor,<br />

advanced equipment or the transfer of<br />

production to a low–wage area, rather, a<br />

need has arisen for ‘strategic flexibility’,<br />

better suited to respond to the market<br />

requirements of the time than to pursue a<br />

mere generic approach to competitive<br />

success.<br />

It is, thus, obvious that the key to long term<br />

success of a company is being able to do<br />

things better than your competitors, besides<br />

selecting and creating operating capabilities<br />

in anticipation of market demands.<br />

Mass Customization – Developing<br />

Unique Operating Capabilities<br />

Providing remarkable services to customers<br />

is imperative in order to perform better than<br />

the competitors. One of the programs<br />

invented to meet every customer’s request is<br />

mass customization. This attempt has been<br />

on one hand, embraced as providing a<br />

unique value to the customers efficiently and<br />

on the other as a strategy that can produce<br />

unnecessary cost and complexity.<br />

Later, four distinct approaches to<br />

customization namely - collaborative,<br />

adaptive, cosmetic and transparent have<br />

been identified, which provided a<br />

framework for companies to design<br />

customized products and to support business<br />

processes. Each of the approaches is<br />

important in its own way and differs on the<br />

conditions under which each should be<br />

employed.<br />

Collaborative customization is apt for<br />

businesses which deals with customers who<br />

cannot easily articulate their requirements,<br />

and grow frustrated when forced to select<br />

from a plethora of options. The adaptive<br />

approach is appropriate for businesses<br />

whose customers want the product to<br />

perform in different ways in different<br />

situations. The cosmetic approach is<br />

appropriate when customer’s usage of a<br />

product is the same but differs only in how<br />

they want it to be presented. The transparent<br />

approach to customization is appropriate<br />

when customers’ specific needs are easily<br />

predictable.<br />

5<br />

NOVEMBER 2012

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