Achieving Responsiveness in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises through Assemble To Order Strategy

Abstract

With an aggressive economic competition on a global scale, more educated and demanding customers, and a rapid pace of change in process technology, responsiveness in manufacturing is becoming a key competitive advantage. The present paper examines how responsiveness can be achieved in SMEs operating according to an Assemble to Order strategy. The framework - proposed starting from literature analysis and tested through a first case study - will be used in future works to drive a systematic analysis of responsiveness in SMEs. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2014.