Abstract - Competence in manufacturing can be assessed in dimensions such as cost, quality, delivery speed, delivery reliability, flexibility and innovation. Manufacturing strategy literature refers to three paradigms of competence building in manufacturing namely, trade-off, cumulative and integrative. It is likely that companies depending upon their strategic orientation use different approaches of competency building. A widely accepted four-stage model due to Wheelwright and Hayes (W-H) provides basis for assessing strategic role of manufacturing. This paper conducts an exploratory study using cases of two firms to investigate the correspondence between approaches of competency building and stages of W-H model. Keywords – Manufacturing strategy, manufacturing competence, Wheelwright and Hayes model I. INTRODUCTION Manufacturing companies are increasingly under pressure due to more sophisticated markets, changing customer choice and global competition. There is a need to manage manufacturing from a strategic point of view to gain competitive benefit in the business. This view was initially introduced by Skinner [1] in his article “missing link” published in Harvard Business Review and subsequently developed, expanded and repeated by many authors (see for instance, [2][3][4][5][6][7]). A. Paradigms of competency building in manufacturing There is broad agreement in literature that competence in manufacturing can be assessed in dimensions such as cost, quality, delivery speed, delivery reliability, flexibility and innovation. However, authors differ on how the competencies in manufacturing are developed in practice to provide desired level of performance in these dimensions. Manufacturing strategy literature refers to three paradigms of competency building in manufacturing namely, trade-off, cumulative and integrative. The trade-off paradigm indicates that raising one aspect of performance implies reductions in some other aspect [1]. A company which is operating its manufacturing system at industry standards (what the economists refer to as being close to “the efficient frontier” of its resource utilization), cannot be expected to improve two or more competencies simultaneously. For example, a company which opts for flexibility of its production, if successful, would improve the flexibility but its cost efficiency or dependability of its deliveries might fall behind industry standards. This gives an idea of positioning as manufacturing being technologically constrained cannot give all things to all people. Therefore, companies must prioritize their competitive objectives and devote resources to improve performance in the main objectives [2]. Trade-offs forces manufacturing operations to focus on a narrow set of objectives and tasks [8] to allow them to operate at the efficient frontier. In contrast, advocates of the cumulative model claim that tradeoffs are irrelevant in a world of intense competition and advanced manufacturing technologies [9][10]. World class manufacturers set standard developing capabilities that reinforce one another. The most quoted example is of high quality enabling companies to become more responsive to customer needs (flexibility), more reliable (delivery) and more efficient. The advent of advanced manufacturing technologies such as flexible manufacturing system, computer integrated manufacturing and other programmable automation can help plant develop multiple competencies simultaneously. The integrative perspective seeks to reconcile differences between tradeoff and cumulative models. Trade-offs in the manufacturing are dynamic in the sense that they were real but could be improved in operations [7]. Hayes and Pisano [4] argue that manufacturing strategy is no longer concerned with making short-term tradeoffs among manufacturing competencies. Rather, they emphasize the need for a dynamic, capability-building driven manufacturing strategy which elevates the efficient frontier to a higher level. They suggested dealing with trade-offs involved in some circumstances the repositioning of competitive priorities along the existing performance frontier. Enhancement aims at raising the performance of different trade-off variables, for example to obtain new competitive advantages. However, improving trade-offs required the sustained, coordinated implementation of a series of improvement initiatives [11]. Silveria[11] refers to three types of decisions: optimization, repositioning, and enhancement (see, Fig. 1), that closely capture different paradigms for competency building. Optimization moves combined performance from point A inside the trade-off frontier to B on the trade-off frontier by simultaneous improvements. Examples of optimization decisions include supplier choice, facility location, and the quantification of economic order sizes. Repositioning from point B to point C raises objective 2’s performance at the expense of Correspondence between Manufacturing Strategy Paradigms and Wheelwright and Hayes Model: Two Case Studies Bhurchand Jain 1 , Gajendra K. Adil 1 and Usha Ananthakumar 1 1 Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India (adil@iitb.ac.in) 996 978-1-4244-6567-5/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE