Strategic role assessment model for plants within international manufacturing networks

With globalization becoming more and more of a reality in our day, manufacturing companies are significantly considering the expansion of their production sites out of the national borders. Scholars, among whom the biggest credit is usually attributed to Ferdows, are working on this aspect of the globalization of operations as a way to bring about useful models for manufacturing companies to classify their foreign plants according to their strategic importance. Based on an extensive review of the literature and the available frameworks, this dissertation thesis aims to provide companies with a strategic role assessment model to evaluate the roles of their plants within their international manufacturing networks and map them on a strategic matrix. On the strategic level, this model can be of great use to companies while they formulate their business and operations strategies, and while they take decisions related to shifting the strategic roles of certain plants as well as adding new plants to their existing networks. The model is generated based on a deep understanding of the existing literature and comprises of two questionnaires and an Excel tool that is used to measure and mathematically evaluate the results of the questionnaires. Two versions of the questionnaire exist, being directed at the managers from the headquarters and the foreign plants, respectively. With this distinction, a dual-perspective is obtained with respect to the role of each single plant considered. Company case studies with top-level managers of four Turkish manufacturing companies, well-known and specialized in their industries, are exploited as a way to further test, fine-tune and validate the model. Last but not least, certain managerial implications and guidelines related to the future use of the model are derived based on the inputs gained from the case studies. An interesting further study could be observing the evolution of the strategic roles of manufacturing plants within a certain time period, by applying the questionnaires several times within a predefined time span, and preferably to a larger sample.