Development of a New Operations Strategy Model to Create ‘Integrated Organisations’

Continuous manufacturing industry (CMI) was where the industrial revolution picked up steam, and mass produced its way to industrial glory. Beginning with Henry Ford’s Model T, things have come a long way. Especially, in making the CMI more and more competitive, by using technology, management and human resources confluence. As organisations became larger in size, with wider and deeper product mixes, CMI faced many challenges, in keeping productivity high, and costs low, with consistent, high quality. Competitive markets demanded nothing less.

In the 1950’s Total Quality Management was introduced into organisations, to increase productivity manifold. Following this method, many CMI companies improved their market positioning, and became leaders in their chosen fields. Companies like Toyota, Ford Motors, General Electric, Nippon Steel, come to mind. Following the TQM’s highly successful performance for over 40 years, MBNQA, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, USA, was introduced in 1987 in US companies to create overall excellence in all parts of an organisation, leading to ‘integrated companies’ as the ultimate goal for sustained performance, by using the MBMPE (Malcolm Baldrige Model for Performance Excellence). The ‘Balanced Score Cards’ (BSC) methodology, as an instrument of designing, cascading and communicating strategy, was introduced in 1992. Operations excellence is an outcome of a well-designed, monitored and skilfully implemented operations strategy (OS). This chapter traces the evolution of a ‘OS Wheel’ model of operations strategy, for CMI, deployed using the MBMPE, using BSC’s, to achieve performance excellence and sustained competitive advantage. The model was applied in a large scale, CMI company in India, over a period of fifteen years (a longitudinal study), the description of which will demonstrate its utility.