Abstract
Recently, globalization has become a common and inevitable experience for a manufacturing company. This research seeks to provide an insight into a company's globally competitive strategies by constructing a global manufacturing model. The objective of the model is threefold; organizational, operational, and societal layers. First, an organizational layer helps understand the nature of globalization by cultivating a global mindset in order to design a worldwide organizational structure appropriately. Second, an operational layer discusses, the general idea of what policy a company needs to develop and how a company globally manages its operations and supply chain, resources, and markets. The third layer, societal, shows the importance and the impacts of cross-border environments such as cultures, economics and politics. As illustrations of the model, two case studies are composed. First, SmartDrill Company shows the cross-cultural and economic influences on the company plan to establish a green-field Maquiladora plant. The second case, AWC Company, highlights the effort to reduce supply chain costs, when crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, especially transportation and inventory holding costs, and illustrates the political involvement in NAFTA transportation provision. This research provides information that should contribute to a better understanding of being globally competitive and helps a company to be able to make a wise move against its competitors.
Kijtawesataporn, Komsun (2003). Global manufacturing model and case studies. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -2003 -THESIS -K46.