Co-opetition as a facilitator of manufacturing competitiveness: opportunities and threats

Abstract

Advanced manufacturing paradigms such as agile, reconfigurable, virtual, holonic, fractal and bionic manufacturing are based on two pillars: autonomy of and win-win collaboration amongst the involved manufacturing units to obtain the overall performance objectives. Due to their focus on cooperation these paradigms neglect that real life manufacturing is often characterised by dysfunctional consequences of emergent competition and organised competition, i.e. tendering, dual sourcing, parallel negotiations, ideas and concept competitions, benchmarking and competitive awards. This is the result of a recent survey conducted by the Department of Organisational Design of the University of Stuttgart. The paper shows that in order to tap the full performance potential of manufacturing networks and to overcome the threats of emergent competition existing manufacturing paradigms have to evolve into “co-opetition” (i.e. coexistence of cooperation and competition). Relying on empirical results, the paper outlines management infrastructures that warrant the future competitiveness of manufacturing systems.