Manufacturing strategy implementation and performance benchmarking in Indian packaging product manufacturing companies

The purpose of the paper is to assess the competitiveness of the manufacturing firm. The approach adopted for assessing the competitiveness is through manufacturing strategy implementation and performance benchmarking which will guide manufacturers for improving the current manufacturing decisions. The proposed integrated framework not only helps in quantifying and comparing the current manufacturing performance but also facilitate to pin point misaligned manufacturing decisions that needs to be focused for superior competitiveness. The intent of this paper is also to provide recommendations for plants committed to performance benchmarking. For analysing the competitiveness, plants are classified in four groups based on the increasing level of manufacturing strategy implementation using cluster analysis. A case of a manufacturing plant has been used to demonstrate its level of competitiveness and the areas of improvements based on benchmark values. Performance benchmarking is carried out by assessing difference in performance of a plant.