The origin of the project comes from two main aspects. First, considering the concept of Skinner
(1968), who stressed the need to attach a crucial importance of manufacturing strategy as a
competitive weapon for companies. And second, blending it with the current scenario of
relationships between firms all around the world, in response of the aggressive worldwide
competition, in which the task of sustaining competitive advantage has become even tougher.
The current project attempts to study and analyze the manufacturing strategy field in a context of
collaboration between firms, without forgetting the upper levels of strategic planning within a
company, and how all this elements interact to each other and affect it.
The author will be supported by a theoretical background based on the topic and the classification of
different inter-firm collaboration linkages that could take place in this moment. It is been studied the
different levels of strategy within a firm, and how each affects the manufacturing level, in a context
of cooperation between organizations, based on different approaches to firm’s strategy, which could
be valuable to the present work: Relational view, Resource-Based view and Extended Resource-
Based view.
Related with the case study, the author provides a brief case of U.S. automobile manufacturing
firms, being focused in General Motors, which offers with valuable information of the present topic.
In order to analyze the manufacturing strategy with more detail, the author considered to highlight
the case of the Joint Venture undertook between GM and Toyota, which gives a strong empirical
support to the work.
In conclusion, this project provides a wide outlook of the scenario of collaboration linkages between
firms, being focused on manufacturing decision areas, and taking into account all the elements
involved, both theoretical and empirical data.
It is basic to state that during the work, operations strategy and manufacturing strategy are treated
as synonyms that are referred to the same concept, as it is seen along the bibliography and
documents.Ingeniería Industria
